


Sapokanikan

by melforbes



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:05:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: He takes her to New York City. She hates New York City.





	1. Gaining Spare Vacation Days at a Moment's Notice

**Author's Note:**

> This is far outside of my comfort zone, as will be best shown in subsequent chapters. A 'soundtrack' pairing can be found at [this link](https://playmoss.com/en/melforbes/playlist/sapokanikan).

At first, she couldn't remember how to flick the lighter correctly. Though she sent sparks, no flame caught, so she huffed, adjusted her hand on the Bic, tried once more. _Your nails are too long,_  she told herself, _and your hands are too old, chicken-skinned and almost forty-eight, and I'm not so sure that those marks are freckles anymore._  As she flicked again, part of her nail went skipping onto the balcony floor below her feet, but finally, she had a flame, so she held the tip of the cigarette to the light, wondered how she used to do this so often and with such practiced, muscled ease. She thought _don't cough, don't choke_  as she took a long inhalation, and though this was her first smoke in - she counted as she exhaled - sixteen years, she managed to look more adult than amateur, her breaths dragoning in the cold February air.

A balcony, their Airbnb had a fucking _balcony,_  and it represented the first mistake of this vacation: she'd let Mulder plan it. Or, rather, Mulder had planned it while she'd retired to the bedroom, while she'd stripped from her clothes - not covered in urine like her scrubs had been but holding enough of its scent that she knew she wouldn't be comfortable enough to sleep without a shower - and had gone alone to the bathroom, where she let the hot spray of water drown the day. As she'd put on pajamas at one in the afternoon, Mulder'd gone on that laptop of his - the _e_ , _t_ , and _c_  keys were beginning to fade with use - and had found them an Airbnb with a balcony. She scoffed at it, a studio apartment with a balcony, as she sat at the little metal table and chairs outside; what's the benefit of an apartment when the second room is outdoor, and why have a balcony in New York, of all places?

Though the weather around her felt nippy, and though her pajamas and fleece hardly rivaled the cold, she found solace in how crisp the day felt, how the morning was hard and scratchy rather than soft and warm. Today, she didn't want to be coddled, to feel the world pitying her for how out-of-control she'd let herself become. She didn't want to feel shame for how her micromanagement had gone to apathy, for how she'd turned into an old woman who collapsed into a puddle of piss when things got bad. Today, she would prove those doubts incorrect, and as she took another breath on the cigarette, she cemented that intention.

And New York looked like a hazy greyscale, like the beginning of a bad post-apocalyptic movie, like a desolate and robotic land of exile; fluorescent lights littered the skyline, the city bleak and messy. While she'd been in college, she'd spent a spring break with two friends in New York, the three of them sharing a couch and drinking shitty beer while pretending to have fun, but in the end, the week had only cost her money - of course, she always pulled the short straw when it came to paying for booze - and left her feeling unfulfilled while Missy had insisted that a trip to somewhere warm would've been a much better idea. Though she knew she'd only been to the parts of the city that made locals cringe, those being Times Square and a ratty apartment with fourth-hand furniture, she had seen enough of the place to know with conviction that, if there were a spot that she could possibly enjoy in New York, it was so deeply hidden that types like her would never care to find it.

In the spring of 2009, they'd spent a long-weekend in Montreal, and that city had felt introverted, clean, soft and heathered and sunkissed each morning; back then, they'd rented an apartment with a balcony too, that apartment a one-bedroom. As she exhaled, she remembered sitting in a tank top and leggings on that balcony, a salad from a French farmer's market on her lap, her hair tied in a bun, her tattered copy of _Sense and Sensibility_  just waiting for her to return to the English-speaking world. Sometimes, Mulder had tried to speak French but pronounced everything like he was speaking Latin, and though she'd told him the three general rules - slur your words, don't pronounce the last syllable, and know what the accents mean - he still said _boor-dox_  as he looked at a wine menu while she correctly ordered _bordeaux_ , and when she remembered his attempts to order _creeps_ , she involuntarily smiled. That city, with its different language, succinct metro, and sweet, effervescent feel, was the proper place to spend a vacation.

But New York? She scoffed at the thought. Whatever had possessed Mulder to seek out New York was beyond her, but nowadays, it seemed that their natural state was one of disconnect. _Maybe it's better this way,_  she thought as she made it to the end of one smoke. _Maybe some things are best kept apart._

And she could indulge this kind of thinking until moments when he looked at her, when she saw the remnants of his boyish face as he peeked through the sliding-glass door and stared at where she sat on the balcony. In pajama pants and a tee shirt, he watched as she snuffed the cigarette out against the ceramic bowl she'd taken from the apartment, her eyes down while his gaze bored through her. On the street below, a car alarm sounded, and though the morning had barely begun, the city seemed not to care, like loud birds in spring, like her college-age neighbors who'd played Abba into the small hours of the morning many apartments ago. When she looked up, she met Mulder's gaze, saw new softness in his eyes, his brow furrowing in concern, confusion, contempt.

Defeat, too. That emotion was clearer than the rest.

Slipping another cigarette out of a pack he never watched her purchase, she stuck it in her mouth, flicked the lighter with performative ease this time. Focusing on the smoke, she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and when she opened her eyes and exhaled, he wasn't at the window anymore.

* * *

She wished she could send her younger self a how-to guide titled _Gaining Spare Vacation Days at a Moment's Notice_  because, though such a thing was a nuisance now, she could think of many times in her past when a surprise vacation would've been valuable. In her guide, her first step would be to take on extra shifts, to work overtime, to cover for doctors whose children were in the heart of flu season, to volunteer at blood drives even though she typically only stood around or offered moral support, Red Cross staff dominating the room. The second step - the most crucial - was to continue in this overworking pattern while showing no signs of how tired she was at work; at no time was she permitted to show her lethargy in front of her peers, but if friends or family - namely Mulder - were to ask, the excuse _I'm just exhausted_  would always suffice. The third step required a loss of control, and then, vacation days were hers to indulge.

The hospital had started having her assist on surgeries, a high honor given that her surgical training was recent and post-graduate, and though she was never the one to cut, she still held authority in the operating suite, she the vice to the primary surgeon's president. Because of her heightened status, and because she'd told him she was sick of throwing out the disposable ones, Mulder had gifted her a cloth scrub-cap, one made of blue floral fabric that tied in the back, and every day, she saw it hanging on its designated hook in her locker, but that day, she'd overlooked it completely, had headed toward surgical preparation without it. Midway to her destination, she wavered, her mind hazy with lack of sleep, her eyes dry, a headache between her eyebrows reminding her once again that she was dehydrated; as she realized that she'd forgotten her cap, she checked her watch, decided that she could still keep to their timetable if she ran, and turned backward so that she could return to the locker rooms. At one moment, she was running, her pace a light and inconspicuous jog through the hospital hallways, and at the next, she wasn't.

It was just exhaustion, her doctor had said as she'd been left in an emergency room bed three normal electrocardiograms and one call to Mulder later, but the appearance of it - a scrubbed-up figure fainting in a hospital hallway, a disoriented woman surrounded by doctors and nurses who clearly knew her though she couldn't seem to identify them, the contents of her bladder released because of her loss of consciousness leaving a large, unsightly stain on her pants - had brought about a scene. Though she didn't want to think of herself as a judgmental person, and though she knew better than to assume that the medical profession was kind on one's body, she agreed that watching a doctor crumble into a puddle of piss wouldn't instill faith in any patients. When a frazzled and unshowered Mulder had managed to arrive at the hospital, he took her home, tried and failed to start fights about her hours, and eventually booked them flights to New York. Apparently, their printer was broken because it had misprinted the purchase dates on their tickets.

And that was how she'd managed a paid week of vacation on short notice.  

As she sat at a New Age restaurant in Brooklyn - just that title made her want to roll her eyes - she thought of the tonsillectomy she had been scheduled to assist on at that very moment.

"I was thinking," Mulder said, sitting across from her at the table, "that we could go to the Empire State Building. I know neither of us has ever been, so we might as well. And I've made reservations for dinner, so that's all taken care of."

He took a bite of his toast, so multigrain that she saw more seeds in it than bread itself, slathered in vegan butter because this cafe didn't have any of the real stuff. In front of her, a yogurt parfait, complete with fresh strawberries that had cost more than a nice cut of meat would, sat half-empty. Her cup of green tea was still too hot to sip, steam wafting up from the artisanal ceramic. Though the cafe was bland, the walls white and the tables rugged and woody, the menu a long list of too-expensive delicacies that lacked certain ingredients she really, genuinely thought food required, she forced herself to remember that he could've taken her to a greasy spoon or even a pub despite the hour instead, his habits predictably unpredictable. Maybe Mulder was like this city in that way, all unpractical but somehow constant, his current state based on a million different tiny factors, his body never sleeping, his moods either grey and dreary or so bright and inspiring that the world stared on in awe.

She still hated New York.

"And maybe later," he said in between sips of craft coffee, "we can go to the Strand. I know Politics and Prose is your favorite, but this could be a close second, right? And-"

"Are you sure you're up for this?"

She watched as his warm, bright face grew a shade grayer, his eyes losing a bit of spark, his heartbeat going from normal to low and lethargic. Though she knew she shouldn't have brought it up, she figured that bringing it up now would be better than bringing it up later, while they both stood at the top of the Empire State or while he watched her search for a new title by an author she liked. _Particularly the Empire State, though, because it's so far up,_  she thought with detachment that made her wince. _Unhappy people tend to see something beyond the pretty view in high-up places._

Taking a deep breath, he cowered, "I should be asking _you_  that."

"I'm fine, Mulder," she dismissed.

And he laughed dryly, and she wanted to stand up and leave, to angrily thumbs-up a cab driver, to take a yellow taxi from here back to Virginia and spend the rest of her so-called vacation at home, where sticky subways and exhaust fumes felt so far away. However, she merely stared on, her face unreadable and stoic, her breakfast abandoned.

"I'm not going to drag you around the city all day," she said.

"I thought _I_  was going to be the one doing the dragging."

"I've voluntarily left the house more than once this month. Comparatively, anything you do today can't possibly be called dragging."

"Why do you always have to win an argument?" he asked. "Can't you just admit that you're hurting and move on?"

"So this is an argument."

"This is supposed to be a vacation, Scully," he said, his brow furrowing in disdain. "I know it's not under ideal circumstances, but it would be nice to at least try to enjoy ourselves."

She wanted another cigarette.

And though she didn't want to be a spoilsport, she still couldn't discern a way to enjoy her time in a city she despised while her thoughts ticked _work, cost, Mulder_ like clockwork, each topic a stressor of incomparable variety. If she let him actively ask about work, they would inevitably fight about her hours, and she had no desire to be kicked out of an Airbnb simply because they didn't know how to keep their voices down, their little rural house making them lose all concepts of noise rules. Though he insisted that money wasn't a problem for them whenever she brought finances up, and though she knew enough of their joint savings to understand that he was correct, the recent recession kept her cautious; pointless spending was pointless spending, and she couldn't excuse an expensive jaunt in the city or cash thrown into the bonfire that was their current mutual state. When it came to the topic of Mulder, she found herself feeling dreary like the greying month of February, cold and tired and in desperate need of springtime reprieve, and though his therapist - or, rather, the therapist she forced him to see, dragged him to as though he were a child afraid of a doctor's appointment - had rightfully put him on medication, she still found herself responsible for his mental state, checking each day that the pill bottle contained one fewer than it had the night beforehand, watching his diet and sleep schedule as though he were a patient of hers. No matter how greatly she tried to label it - male ego, the stigma regarding mental illness, fear of intimacy - she couldn't understand why the topic made him so uncomfortable, why he wouldn't tell her about his appointments and why he shut down at the mere mention of the word _depression,_  sometimes even words starting with a _d_  eliciting a response.

She hadn't checked his pill-bottle this morning.

"Listen," he said after a long, tense silence, "I'm sorry that this happened, and I'm sorry that I can't make this better for you, but I'm trying, Scully. I swear, I'm trying, and this isn't easy for me, but I want to make things better."

He reached across the table for her hand, but she didn't reach back. Deflating, he said, "I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and I'll keep doing it wrong if you don't talk to me."

So she took a deep breath, considered her options, and decided to take the easier, less admirable route.

"The Empire State Building sounds nice," she said, picking up her teacup and taking a sip.

Softly, he nodded, some color returning to his face. She could manage a day in New York, couldn't she? For his sake, she could push her emotions aside and be thankful. After all, he was out of the house, and he wanted to take her somewhere, two things he hadn't done for longer than she wanted to remember. For today, she would choose to be thankful.

* * *

She hated the subway. She hated walking on sidewalks packed with people, everyone mumbling into their microphoned earbuds about something _so_ much more important than the world around them. She hated Prius-taxis that sped too fast through lights that had long ago turned red, and she hated loud music playing from too many different windows, and she hated people who held no concept of personal space, and most of all, she hated the culture of this city, the sense that everyone needed to be somewhere else ten minutes ago and that their lives were _so_  much more important than hers. As Mulder ducked into the lobby of the Empire State Building, she huffed at all of the people around them, hoped the main deck wouldn't be too crowded.

Thankfully, the inside of the building was quieter and more open, a Wednesday morning in the middle of February making for a low tourist concentration, so she exhaled while he bought tickets near the elevator. People going about their workdays skidded by in heels and suits she once wore, and as Mulder handed his credit card over to the attendant, she stuffed her hands in the pockets of her jacket, toyed with a coin left in there.

Though she'd been in skyscrapers before, and though she'd traveled up enough floors to challenge the fear, she still found herself anxious as she and Mulder entered the elevator, a little vacationing family and a few older couples joining them. She didn't like flying, fire escapes, long windows, high-up condos, planes flying too low, helicopters over cities, the sounds of jet engines - the elevator jolted as they rose, and she sharply inhaled, her back pressed to the wall, Mulder looking on in concern - people carrying large bags in places where large bags were unnecessary, guns protruding from policemen's pockets, police horses, horses in general - Mulder reached for her hand, and unlike this morning, she let him take it, forced herself to breathe as he soothed his thumb along her knuckles - children screaming and crying and nonsensically begging for parents who would never return, the sounds of slamming doors, men shouting, men speaking above a conversational register, men in the dark - as she met Mulder's gaze, his asking eyes let her know the large number of these that he knew - losing the people she loved, losing limbs, marathon bombings, hemorrhagic fevers, being unable to hold back tears. At the front of the elevator, an attendant gave a short history lesson about the building while explaining that they were all climbing up 86 floors - 688 individual steps, if she'd done her math correctly - of one of New York's most iconic buildings.

Iconic? While her hands shook, she scoffed. If it were iconic enough to properly represent this city as a whole, a dead rat and an empty Starbucks cup would be mounted to the front of the building with _beware_  written in blood underneath.

"Scully?"

She jolted back to awareness, Mulder looming above her; the rest of the elevator had emptied, the colors going fuzzy around her, and while the attendant mumbled something she couldn't hear, her pulse pounded against her head, her heart pumping too quickly. _It's the elevation change,_  she lied to herself, then questioned why she even bothered thinking things like that when she knew the truth: though she could shoot guns and cut open bodies without flinching, the sheer thought of heights made her feel faint.

"Hey," he said softly, reassuringly, his clasped hand squeezing hers. For now, she centered herself on the oceanic hues of his eyes, blue and grey like the sea her father had loved. Sometimes, she liked to think of heaven as a vast ocean, her father's ship sailing along in a place the color of Mulder's eyes. "There's a place to sit down right over here. Let's take a breather."

So she let him guide her to a bench by one of the long windows - she swallowed anxiously - and sat alongside him, their hips bumping, her purse clattering to the ground. Reaching his arm behind her, he soothed at her hip, the sleeve of his jacket rustling against hers as he did so.

Softly, he said, "I shouldn't have taken you up here."

She huffed a breath, said, "I'm fine, Mulder. Really."

"Remember the CN Tower?"

She closed her eyes in discomfort. Of course she remembered the CN Tower, remembered how he'd wanted their anniversary dinner to be so many stories up, and because she'd been charmed by the exquisite menu - and because she'd had a perfect dress for the occasion - she'd managed to overlook her fears and board the glass-paneled elevators with ease, her only concerns being whether or not people far below could see up her skirt as the elevator rose. Then, at about a hundred feet up, she'd remembered, and one tense, anxious, unappetized dinner later, they were back at their hotel room while he cursed himself for not remembering.

He'd eaten the claw meat of her lobster that night. He always ate her claw meat.

"I can't believe I forgot," he said, his remorse genuine. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she said, her hands still shaking.

"No, it's not," he insisted but didn't qualify.

Silently, they sat together, the windows too far from their bench for her to see any of the skyline, long walls of black-and-white photographs showing the building's origins surrounding them. As he gingerly held her there, she wondered what New York had been before it'd been a city, and because she didn't remember learning such a thing in high school history, she knew it must have to do with European colonialism and a lot of unnecessary death. However, the plagues around her glossed over those elements, showed the builders and designers of this skyscraper, flaunted its height and accolades and well-kept records. To ground herself, she mindlessly read one paragraph, the steady words and Mulder's calm hand at her waist making her breaths deepen and her hands fall still.

When she thought of the windows again, she felt a jolt of fear, but then, she remembered how it felt to have him touch her, and as she indulged the feeling further, she tried to recall the last time he'd done this, comforted her while she felt scared. As he'd said this morning, he was trying, wanted to do better by her, knew that, though she deflected and avoided the topic, she felt hurt by his absence. Though his efforts seemed moot, she forced herself to take a deep breath, to stand up, to take his hand so that she could pull him up as well. Grabbing her purse and resting it over her shoulder, she kept her fingers entwined with his while she began to lead him across the floor, seeking out a better view of the skyline. If this was going to be his first time making an effort after the depression had deepened, then she dared not get in his way.

"Scully?" he asked, shifting uncomfortably beside her.

"It's okay," she said, gave him a nod of confirmation. "I'm okay."

As she met his gaze, she saw the worry furrowing his brow, remembered the seas of his eyes; softly, she smiled at him, her heart feeling warm at the sight of this Mulder, _her_  Mulder, the version of him who massaged her feet after a long day at work, who cried against her shoulder about the injustices of the world, who sleepily moved closer to her in bed at night when he felt she was too far away. She'd missed this Mulder, the sensitive, warm man who loved her, and as he smiled back at her, she didn't care about the windows or the elevator or the heights anymore.

She led him to a spot looking out toward the river, and when the sight came into view, she stilled, so he reached for her, but her stance wasn't out of fear. Looking out at the city beyond her, she saw ornate lines sectioning off this greyscaled land, a few water-taxis chugging through the river, barren trees on sidewalks, ominous clouds in the distance warning of snow to come. Though this city seemed so colorless, she almost liked how dreary it could be, like how skies flashed beautifully with lightning whenever it rained, like how dry vanilla cake was the best kind to pair with ice cream; the dullness added an element of depth that she hadn't noticed before, and as she watched the sky shift, as passersby snuck in beside them for a glance, she almost liked the city.

"It's beautiful," she said breathlessly, Mulder calming beside her.

"It is," he agreed.

Standing silently with him, she watched cars travel across bridges, heard none of the city's sounds but could remember the wavy outbursts of boats on the river, could think of the honking horns at intersections. She wondered if she could see their apartment from any of these windows.

"I'm really sorry," he repeated from alongside her.

As she looked to him, she watched him chew his lip awkwardly, knew he was computing his grand sum of failures in a way that would only become more and more cyclic if he let it persist.

"It's _okay,_ " she insisted. "I'm...it's nice up here, Mulder. I'm glad we came."

"Yeah, but it's Day One of this vacation, and I've already taken you someplace horrible."

"It's lovely here," she defended, turning back to the skyline. "And we both know you've taken me to far worse places before."

"But I wanted today to be fun for you."

Taking her eyes off of the skyline, she looked to him, watched his profile while he worked his jaw around his thoughts. He hadn't shaven this morning, and with a little bit of scruff, he looked younger, more agile; she liked the way his hair framed his face, and that jacket, a grey one over a navy v-neck sweater she'd bought him, brought out the color of his eyes. After all of their near-death - and real death - experiences, she almost felt honored to see crow's feet around his eyes, to see wrinkles on his face. She liked that his hair was starting to go just a shade toward grey.

"Hey," she said, then tugged him toward her.

Gingerly, she brought her open hand to his face, her fingers holding his chin while she stood on tiptoe and brought her lips to his, the kiss chaste and benign but elongated nonetheless, and when she dropped back down to her heels, she looked up at him, tried to read his expression.

When a bashful smile bloomed across his face, she felt the heights and elevators grow all the more irrelevant.


	2. Exhibit A

**EXHIBIT A - FEBRUARY 2011**

_Jolting awake, she gasped for breath, her heart rate far past normal, a sweat stain left on her pillow. As she clutched at the comforter, reminded herself of her surroundings, forced herself to breathe, she pushed the nightmare, one she couldn't remember, aside and chalked it up to the most reliable part of her life: the onset of menopause. Now, she'd entered the phase in which she still had her period during certain months though she also experienced menopausal symptoms, the combination a hormonal lose-lose that left her having hot flashes at work and blubbering at the most minor of emotions. Worst of all, she'd started having nightmares, ones so vivid that she woke the same way each time, her body shaking in fear, her muscles all tensed. Taking a long, deep breath, she tried fruitlessly to remind herself that this was natural, that her body would adjust, but all she wanted to do was throw her pillow at a wall and cry until somehow her symptoms miraculously ceased._

_As soft tapping came to her pillow, she turned over in bed, faced Mulder; after her first nightmare, he'd spooked her by simply whispering her name, the dreams so terrifying that even his quiet voice jolted her, so now, he tapped instead, made his presence known as gently as he could. Looking at her, he had his furrowed-brow look of concern, his eyes asking what had happened, the wrinkles around them showing he already knew her answer._

_Forcing words to come, she managed, "I can't remember it."_

_He nodded, the darkness of their bedroom casting his face in cool blue light. Reaching out to her, he let her drift toward him, dared not touch her until after she'd touched him first, and as she nestled herself in his big arms, she finally managed to exhale a long-held and anxious breath._

_"Is there anything we can do to make these stop?" he asked, his fingers gently carding through her hair._

_She closed her eyes against him, timed her breaths with his._

_"There's hormone therapies," she offered quietly, "but I'm not sure I want to pursue those."_

_"Why not?"_

_She sighed, said, "The hot flashes and night sweats aren't frequent or severe enough that I'd be comfortable trying hormones, and these aren't a common enough symptom that a doctor would recommend that off the bat."_

_"What would they recommend instead?"_

_She huffed._

_"Talk therapy."_

_"And that wouldn't help?"_

_"It's a menopause symptom, not a mental illness," she gave. "I'm not sure that even the most effective therapy could get rid of these."_

_"You can't just keep having them," he said, mildly aghast. "There has to be something you can do."_

_Her heart rate slowing, her thoughts easing their pace, she said, "I can get through this phase and hope they lessen with time."_

_"When Dana Scully prescribes_ hope, _we all know we're screwed."_

_Luckily, the comment made her laugh, so he laughed too, his arms drawing her in, her breaths starting to slow._

_And it was moments like these when she remembered having violent nightmares in her lonely apartment so many years ago, her only solace being the gun she kept in her safe; she could think of countless nights spent forcing herself to breathe while thoughts of Emily, her sister, cloaked men looking to kill her for reasons her family would never understand, passed through her mind as though they were weightless and mindless. While the darkness still inhabited her home, she would find herself sleepless and shaky, the inner world of corrupt men making her heart race in the worst of ways. However, her new nightmares were baseless, a chemical reaction happening somewhere within her middle-aged brain, and whenever these happened, Mulder was alongside her, his arms open, his heartbeat and soft breaths more comforting than she could've ever imagined they would be._

_All he needed to do was hold her, and eventually, the world would feel equanimous again. Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead against his warm skin, let his scent and body envelop her._

_After a long while, he asked quietly, "Is there anything I can do for you?"_

_Nestling deeper into his arms, she sighed a comfortable breath._

_"Stay here," she said, so he stayed._


	3. An Old Trick Played by the Light and the Wine

He took her to the beach a few summers ago, rented an oceanside cottage for them both and brought home newspaper-wrapped red lobsters for dinner, the aging table in the house covered with napkins and cups of melted butter while they tore into their dinner; he ate her claw meat and washed his dinner down with a blueberry beer, a rarity given that he hardly ever drank, and afterward, they walked down to the rocky beach, sat there wearing fleeces because even summer in Maine was chilly, and watched the tides roll in.

"You're an ocean girl," he'd told her. "Navy kid, Pisces...you swim, don't you?"

She'd given him a look, said, "I can. I don't do it often."

When he'd proposed a vacation in Maine, that had been his first point, how she loved to be by the water; she thrived alongside oceans and lakes, and he loved the way she watched the water, how it mesmerized her in the most innocent way.

"But you like water," he'd said.

"Yeah," she'd given with a little laugh. "I _do_  like water."

And this restaurant, nestled upon the Hudson and looking out at Manhattan across the river, reminded her of that little cottage though the house had offered much more privacy and much brighter lighting. With bronze-toned walls and long, vast windows, the restaurant allowed for a wonderful view, one that cast New York's greyscale into a cobalt shade, their candlelit table intimate and warm. Though winter winds blew by outside, she felt warm, expensive wine in her glass, her hair curled, Mulder beyond her wearing a jacket she'd bought him. The price-fix here was more than a hundred dollars. If she peered over Mulder's shoulder, she could see the Brooklyn Bridge.

"I mean it," he repeated, his menu open and ignored while his lips curved up. She liked that grey tie of his, loved how it brought out the warmth in his eyes. "You look incredible. I...whoever designed that dress, I'd like to personally thank them. You look so beautiful."

Softly, she blushed, turned her cheek down as her heart fluttered. The dress was white and long-sleeved, the fabric tight and synched at her right hip, the skirt hugging what little curves she had. Of course, she wore the pearl earrings he'd given her for her forty-fifth, a favorite pair, and her cross dangled idly at her collarbone, her neck long and bare save for the chain, her hair soft and tousled. She'd even ventured out and had put on golden eyeshadow.

"Thank you," she gave awkwardly, still uncomfortable around his compliments despite the years between them.

"Could I...would you mind if I took a picture?" he asked, reaching into his pocket for his phone before she could respond. "The light's hitting you so well, and I'm no artist, but I know art when I see it."

She exhaled, nodded in permission while he fumbled with his cell phone, accidentally used the front-facing camera, furrowed his brow as he took a few blurry shots in a row.

"Come on," she said with a light laugh. "You only need one."

"Just one more, okay?"

Leaning back in her chair, she smiled, gave, "Fine."

So he took one more, then brought his phone down, tapped through things she couldn't discern, and after she cleared her throat - she didn't like seeing cell phones out at the dinner table - he pocketed the device, mumbled, "Sorry. But you _do_  look beautiful."

"Thank you," she said, then brought her attention back to her menu. He matched her, looked through the steak and lobster and rabbit, something she never planned on eating.

Char-grilled octopus, twenty-layer lasagna, Scottish salmon, foie gras, everything sounded so ornate and indulgent to her while she couldn't remember her last meals other than Caesar salads from the hospital's cafeteria and plain nonfat Greek yogurt topped with high-fiber granola and honey if she was feeling wild. Though the salmon dish sounded lovely, she gravitated toward the lobster, her heart light with the memory of those messy dinners in Maine, of how gentle and easy things had felt back then. While they'd been in Maine, they'd talked, and they'd hiked, and they'd gone out to places like Bar Harbor in the evening so that they could see what introverted fare the quiet cities had to offer. Sometimes, they'd spent a day in, her head lolling against his shoulder and his fingers turning the pages of her book for her, their cottage quiet and comfortable, her body nestled deeply into the couch they sat upon.

There was no way for New York to feel like Maine had; she knew that with ease. Back then, she and Mulder had been doing well, their conversations free and easy, the love present and obvious, but now, she came home to what felt like an empty house, Mulder tucked away in that horrible study, the dishes from dinner the night beforehand still in the sink even though he'd had a full twenty-four hours in which he could've washed them. All too recently, he used to greet her at night with a kiss and an inclination of what they should have for dinner, but now, he didn't realize she was home until hours later, when he walked into the living room and found her folding the blanket on the couch, dusting for crumbs, aligning the titles on the bookshelf, cleaning off the kitchen table. Though she supposed he noticed how he never ran out of clean laundry despite his avoiding the washer at all costs, how he always could find food in the pantry, how the lights stayed on above him and how his internet connection - though she craved to sever it - kept on running, he hadn't thanked her for any of it. Of course, she didn't expect a card and flowers each time she threw his underwear in the dryer, but when things were good, he used to kiss the side of her face and mumble quiet gratitude after she managed to fit yet another chore into her busy day. Oftentimes, she would come home from horrible weeks to find the sheets fresh, the pillows fluffed, the whole house spotless while a smiling man in a too-short floral apron made her dinner.

She genuinely couldn't remember her last good meal.

In the end, she ordered the lobster, he the steak, and as they sat quietly, chatter from couples filling the elegant and romantic restaurant, she tried to remember their last fancy date, drew a blank for anything after 2010. How had she behaved? The tablecloths here were long, so she wondered how it would feel to ease out of her white shoe and trail her toes from his ankle to the very end of his sock. Did he even like that? Maybe she could lean her elbows on the table and puff up her breasts, make his mouth water with the concept of _later._  He'd already shown a change in behavior by calling her beautiful; she didn't know how to change her own in order to comply.

Luckily, he took the lead, rested an open hand on the table. Though she hesitated at first, she eased into him, wrapped her thin fingers around his much larger ones.

"I'm sorry," he said genuinely.

"What?"

"I said that I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Shrugging with good nature, he seemed anything but awkward, his words rehearsed so that their meaning would be clear.

"I'm just sorry," he said. "I know this has all been hard on you, and you've been really kind and understanding about it all, so I hadn't noticed you doing yourself in. I should've seen that you overworking yourself. I'm sorry that I never noticed."

Uncomfortably, she shifted in her chair, wanted her hand back though he wouldn't let it go.

"You aren't responsible for my actions," she gave, her eyes on her lap.

"Yeah, but I'm supposed to take care of you," he insisted. "We're supposed to take care of each other, and I haven't held up my end of the bargain. That's my mistake, and I'm sorry."

Swallowing, she didn't want to continue the conversation, managed, "Okay."

"So," he said, letting go of her hand and changing the topic, "what're we doing for your birthday?"

She huffed a breath.

"Nothing," she gave.

"Come _on,_ " he insisted with a laugh. "One thing. One _tiny_  thing, Scully. Anything you want."

"There's nothing I want."

"Everyone wants _something._ "

Tilting her head and acknowledging that point, she corrected, "There's nothing I want that I could feasibly receive."

"Then let's go pie-in-the-sky," he said as he tapped on the table for emphasis. "If you could do absolutely _anything_  on your birthday, what would you do?"

Taking a deep breath, she permitted herself to make a mental list. If she could do absolutely anything on her birthday, then she would want to wake up with him in their bed on that day, his body warm next to hers in their cold, overcast house, and she wanted him to make breakfast, something sweet but not too sweet. Maybe those blueberry buckwheat pancakes he'd fried up at her mother's house last Easter, Bill's kids picking the fruit out and slathering theirs in local maple syrup that she and Mulder had brought along. Then, she wanted him to take her to a park, any park but particularly one near water, and she wanted them to walk for as long as their aging knees could manage, and she wanted his hand in hers, their conversations sparse but meaningful, their bodies wrapped in thick wool coats and their feet warm in their matching L.L. Bean boots that she so loathed to see in their shoe tray. At the end of their walk, she wanted them to duck into a cafe and share a pastry - she'd always liked the concept of a cinnamon bun with a single candle in it in lieu of a whole birthday cake - over coffee and tea, her cheeks pinking with newfound warmth, his laughter easygoing and free-flowing. Then, she wanted to go home and do whatever else they felt like doing, the day special but also normal, her birthday coming and going softly.

And nowadays, that kind of day met his pie-in-the-sky criteria, but she dared herself to dream further, to make that dream sound all too rational, so she thought of seeing her son, of having the most basic glimpse of his life so that she could have a piece of him to hang onto. She wasn't asking for him back; she just wanted to see him breathing, to know that her decision had been the correct one, to understand that he was happy and healthy and safe. Thinking outlandishly, she wondered about asking for her sister to be resurrected, or for five more minutes with her father, or for her menopausal nightmares to cease altogether, or for her laundry to be done by someone else for a whole year, or for her fridge to always be full of fresh produce, or for imported strawberries to taste as good as summery farmer's market ones did. She wished for clear weather, for spring, for Xanax, for her stretch marks to miraculously disappear.

"What's the wildest thing you can think of?" he pressed on, his smile wide. "What's something you're craving?"

" _Maine,_ " she blurted.

Her mind clearing, she felt the restaurant grow quieter, her racing thoughts having taken up so much of her mental space; though the couples around them still mindlessly chattered, she found her focus returning. She thought of dipping her feet in the freezing ocean, of donning fleece in the summer months, of wearing a sundress while walking around Bar Harbor with him, of that chocolate emporium where they both got cones of mocha soft-serve, of kissing ice cream dribbles off of his chin.

"Do you remember that cottage we rented?" she asked. "I've been thinking about it. I'd give anything to go back."

He nodded, internalized the statement, mentally worked through it.

"I know it's not possible," she quickly qualified, "but it's a good memory, and I've been thinking about it. That's all."

He held up a finger to her, went back into his pocket for his phone, and though she huffed, he opened his web browser anyway; she craned her neck to watch as he typed something into Google, bit her lip waiting for him to speak again. Then, he asked, "Would you rather fly into Bar Harbor or Bangor? Bangor's half the price, but it'll be an hour's drive."

" _What?_ "

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Happy birthday," he said. "Choose an airport."

"I can't take time off of work for that!"

"You wouldn't have to," he said casually, as though this proposition weren't as earth-shattering as she found it to be. "We'll leave tomorrow night, stay a few days, fly back here, then head back home as scheduled. Just a nice little detour. We'll be celebrating early, but we'll still be celebrating."

"You can't be serious."

"You said you wanted Maine." He laughed lightheartedly. "I'd like to give you Maine."

"We'll never be able to find a place to rent."

"Au contraire," he said; she remembered his horrible French in Montreal, and suddenly, her heart longed deeply for those easy vacations, for places she loved, for him to be so vivacious and adventures and content again. "Most rentals close up for the winter. All we have to do is get buddy-buddy with an owner and insist that we'll be the cleanest, kindest renters they'll ever have. And that we can provide our own space heater."

"Mulder."

"C'mon, Scully," he said with a smile. "Let's go to Maine."

And she could think of hundreds of arguments - it's expensive, it's not practical, the winter months up there will be unforgiving, it's outlandish - but she could see the crossroads here, knew the gravity any of her countering could have. Though she knew it was unhealthy to never deny him during his more lucid moments, she had trouble damping his excitement, didn't want to grey his complexion, didn't want him to lose interest in her. Plus, he'd taken her on more impulsive trips before, had dragged her to all ends of this country and others in search of the paranormal and unknown, but now, he wanted to travel for the sake of being with her, not for the sake of finding something else. Deny him now, and she didn't know what walls would come up between them.

And when she thought of Maine, when she looked at the man across from her, she craved those slow mornings sipping tea and coffee with him while deciding what leisurely thing they would do that day. In this soft, woody restaurant, he reminded her of two fingers of whiskey, thick and heady and bringing her an inner warmth that eased her grievances, and as she took a sip of her wine, as she considered the possibility, she genuinely wanted to indulge him, priorities and morality be damned. What was holding her back other than her own baseless inhibitions?

She swallowed, then looked him in the eyes, said, "Okay."

His eyes lit up.

"Really?"

"Really," she said with a dry laugh. "No skyscrapers there. I'll be better off."

He laughed lightly, a smile bubbling over, and then, their appetizers were brought out; even after their waiter had refilled her wine glass and had asked if they needed anything else, Mulder was still beaming, and her heart felt lighter, warmer, relieved.

"But we're flying to Bangor, not Bar Harbor," she finished while she stared down at her char-grilled octopus, her mouth watering.

He nodded to her, and as she took her first bite of this course, she felt thankful for this morning, for making an effort, for working to make sure that they could meet in some kind of middle. Beneath the table, he nudged her ankle with his toe, and she thanked God that he could look at her in this way again, as though she were still his best friend, as though she were still the only partner he could picture himself with. She offered him octopus off her fork, trading a bite of hers for one of his sea scallops and pork belly. Though they rarely ordered dessert, they'd been forced to for the price-fix, and she was already excited to steal spoonfuls of his cheesecake.

Things would be better; she could see that clearly. Though things had been hard, things would be better. This dinner was firsthand proof that, no matter how far away they drifted, they could always come back together.

"Did you bring your boots in your suitcase?" he asked after the appetizers had been taken away.

"I did," she said. "Did you?"

"Yes," he confirmed. "I'll book the tickets tonight."

And she smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title based on a line from the song "The Things I Say" by Joanna Newsom.


	4. Exhibit B, Part I

**EXHIBIT B - APRIL 2011, 9AM**

_Though he couldn't recall its title, he knew he had an Elvis song stuck in his head as he stepped down the stairs that rainy morning. Apparently, the storm that had started last night felt no desire to let up, and as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he was thankful that his and Scully's weekend plans dared not take them out of the house. In the kitchen, he could hear breakfast frying, his empty stomach drawing him closer and closer as he found her there, two frying pans on the stove in front of her, the only garments upon her being one of his old tee shirts, her glasses, a hairband that pulled her red tresses into a tight little bun._

_Coming up behind her, he wrapped an arm lazily around her stomach, leaned toward her as he muttered, "You are a_ sight. _"_

_She huffed a laugh while he pressed a kiss to her cheek and held his lips there a beat longer than she'd expected._

_"I am a_ mess, _" she corrected while she folded over one of the two omelets on the frying pans in front of her. On the farthest burner, a skillet full of hashbrowns was left to cool. The last time Scully had cooked hashbrowns, he'd been employed, and he hadn't been employed for a_ long _time._

_He squeezed her, kissed her neck, then let go as he sought out the already-brewed coffee. Taking a mug from the kitchen cabinet, he filled the cup with warm, decadent liquid as he said, "Making breakfast looks good on you."_

_She gave him a look, a half eye-roll brewing beneath her glasses._

_"You're just saying that because some Neanderthal part of your mind thought_ woman, barefoot, kitchen _and forced you to realize your biological imperative."_

_Smirking, he went into the fridge for some cream, said, "I forgot you knew how to cook."_

_"I forgot that I'm_ forgetting _how to cook," she said with a grimace. "You should be glad you didn't see the first round of omelets."_

_He poured a healthy swig of milk into his coffee, swished the mug around to stir, then leaned against the counter as he took his first warm, decadent sip. Furrowing her brow, she watched each omelet - ham and brie for him, spinach and feta for her - with an intensity she used to have while autopsying human corpses. Softly, he let his lips curl into a smile._

_"Thanks for picking up the groceries yesterday," she said as she plated both omelets, as she gave each of them a far healthier helping of hashbrowns than he ever would've expected Dana Scully, Medical Doctor, to dish out. On the kitchen table, she'd put out bowls of washed fruit, all blueberries and strawberries and ornately-cut kiwis. Her usual black English Breakfast had been subbed out for green tea with mint, the warm mug sitting at her spot at the table. Of course, she'd already set out forks and knives._

_"Thanks for cooking. For once," he quipped._

_As he sat down, she playfully swatted his arm._

_"I'd say_ anytime, _but we both know I wouldn't mean it," she gave with a smirk, then picked a blackberry from the bowl._

_And maybe it was just a biological imperative, but as they ate breakfast together, he found his eyes were drawn to her, his focus stuck on little parts of her that he couldn't believe he'd never noticed. He would zero in on the way she bit at one of her smeared lips, at how the tip of her nose moved when she told him that one of his books was overdue at the library, at how long her eyelashes had become even while they were bare and light without makeup. In a shirt too big for her, her shoulders only met the seams halfway, and washed-out grey looked good on her, made her skin creamier and hair brighter and eyes more luminous. He liked the fold of her cellulite against the kitchen chair. He liked the way her unpainted toes gripped at the floor._

_"So," she said while on her last home fry, the sounds of the storm in the background making her voice all the more soothing, "there's a journal I want to finish reading this morning, and if I don't watch the next_ Weeds _episode sometime soon, I'm going to lose my mind, but other than those, I have absolutely no plans for the weekend."_

_"Me neither," he said._

_"Work's been..."_

_She didn't need to finish that sentence._

_"Well, you've got two whole days not to think about work," he said, standing up and sweeping their empty plates over to the sink. "Use them wisely."_

_"It's a shame about the weather."_

_"The rain?" He stared out the window in their kitchen, watched as the browned grasses in the field beyond the house turned into wetlands. "What's so bad about rain?"_

_"I don't know," she said while he washed the dishes. "It messes up my hair."_

_"Ah. A major concern."_

_She rolled her eyes._

_"You haven't showered yet, have you?" he asked, turning the faucet off._

_"No," she said, uncomfortably intrigued. "Why do you ask?"_

_With a quirked lip, he walked back to her, took her hand as he pulled her toward the front door._

_"_ No, _" she said as he brought his open hand to the door handle. "I'm not going out in that weather."_

_"C'mon, Scully," he insisted with a laugh. "We're both barely dressed. I've heard that rain is good for the lungs."_

_He tugged her forward while she tugged back, her feet firmly planted in the floor, her resistance remarkable given her size._

_"Yeah, it's good for your lungs until you catch pneumonia," she countered._

_"Of all people, you_ must _know that's untrue."_

_"I'm not even wearing shoes."_

_"Neither am I."_

_"_ So _not my point."_

_"C'mon," he insisted, "haven't you ever wanted to dance in the rain?"_

_And finally, as he opened the front door, she stopped fighting him, was willing to join him on the covered deck while rain fell heartily all around the house. Her poor car was taking a beating, but otherwise, the world out here seemed peaceful despite the storm._

_"I'm not going any farther than right here," she gave, her arms crossing over her shirt while she shivered._

_"Suit yourself," he said, then raced down the porch's steps, felt water pooling around his feet with every step he took. Only seconds later, he found that his shirt had soaked through, fat raindrops falling in those April showers he'd always heard about._

_Up on the porch, she watched him with a discomfort he couldn't label, but as he flopped onto his back on the grass, let the rain soak his pajamas and blur his vision, he found he could only laugh, the world feeling so ornate and full of possibility, the rain bringing newfound life to their home. Closing his eyes, he let the feeling fill him, let himself be at peace with the rest of the world._

_And then, he startled as he felt her step up to him, and when he looked up, he saw her standing there, her pale legs covered in goosebumps, pieces of her hair sloppily sticking to her face. As her shirt grew heavy with wetness, he watched a trickle of yesterday's mascara move down her cheek._

_"Are you happy now?" she asked as she kneeled next to him in the mud, then lay down beside him._

_"Yes," he said, then took her wet cheek in his palm and kissed her._


	5. Ce n'est pas une rue

This city seemed to prosper on cloudy nights, manmade stars shining off of the bridges over the Hudson, the whole place illuminated by itself; she wondered if New York could be one of those few environments, like deep sea vents, that didn't rely on the sun as its ultimate source of energy. Rationally - and logically, and scientifically - she knew that was not the case, but for the moment, the wine in her blood made her feel optimistic and fantastical; tonight, cities were powered by the people, not the sun, and this place was brimming with human life, each street a new adventure, each sidewalk full of hope.

In one hand, she held her expensive bottle of wine, and in the other, she held his hand. While they walked along the river and toward their apartment, she thought of tomorrow, of how they could sleep in and explore the city together, or maybe they could stay in and talk, or maybe he would open up to her, and now, she would be able to understand him better, and they could regain the closeness she'd held so dear. As she stepped over cracks, her feet aching in her heels, he lifted their joined hands, brought a kiss to her knuckles.

"I'm stuffed," she said for the sake of conversation. She'd missed his voice.

"Me too," he said, streetlights casting him in an auburn glow. "I don't regret that last bite of cheesecake, though."

"I'm glad the desserts were small," she gave.

"We'll have to remember that place," he said. "Good food. Good wine, I'm assuming?"

"Very good."

A taxi slowed near them, then sped onward when the driver realized they were in their own little world, oblivious to passersby, warm and content despite the February chill.

"Thank you for being patient with me," he said genuinely, looking down to meet her eyes. "I know I haven't been easy to deal with recently, but you've been so patient. I'm thankful for that."

"You don't have to apologize or thank me for just being there," she scoffed.

"I want to," he insisted.

"Well, you don't have to."

In the following silence, she stared on at the river beyond them, watched the way the light hit the ripples of the water. Though this city never slept, it had gone momentarily quiet, and despite the terror that was Manhattan, she liked this neighborhood of Brooklyn, liked that it grew quiet in the evenings, liked that it wasn't too populated.

"About Maine," he said while he entwined his thick fingers between her long, ornate ones, "I figure we can find a house by the sea, or if those aren't available, we can just stay in a hotel in Bar Harbor, keep to the city. There was that one sweater shop you loved. We could both use some more winter clothes."

"Yeah," she said, thinking of the fisherman's knit she'd packed in her suitcase. "I'd love to go there."

"And those chocolates from that little sweet shop."

"I thought of those too!"

"There's an eight pm flight tomorrow out of LaGuardia to Bangor."

"Are there any earlier flights?"

He shrugged awkwardly, said, "I don't remember."

"Didn't you just look them up?"

Off-put, he said, "There was one around noon."

"Why don't we take that one instead?"

"We might not have a place to stay by then," he insisted. "We're just better off with the night trip instead."

Conceding, she gave, "Okay."

As they walked, they passed windows to closed-up shops, bright restaurants, little pizzerias packed with a weeknight crowd, and she could see vivaciousness in people, watched soundlessly as folks in these buildings laughed. Though she'd seen horrors committed by men, and though she knew enough science to understand that the world was unforgiving, a certain part of her still thought that people as a whole prioritized wellbeing, that no one acted in a way that couldn't at least help them along some certain path. Of course, morals and beliefs skewed those actions and could hurt others, but at their core, no human specifically tried to make their own life worse; every action had intention, and though some intentions could be harmful, nothing was ever wholly bad.

Passing by a French restaurant, she looked down their dimly lit alleyway, saw stomped-out cigarettes and a few ratty chairs sitting there, could smell the scents of fresh bread and petit-fours wafting toward her.

"Hey," he said, then tugged her down that little alley.

Flummoxed, she followed but asked, "What're you doing?"

"Put the wine down."

"Mulder."

Gingerly, he took the wine from her fingers, set it down alongside her heels, then brought a hand to her cheek, touched her as though she were as fragile as a porcelain doll. He stroked his thumb along where she'd applied rouge, and while he looked at her with such quiet admiration, she met his gaze, his eyes bright in the cast light of the alley. Through vents of the building, she could head the clattering of dishes, the sounds of idle chatter, Edith Piaf music playing dully in the background, and for a few heartbeats, he simply touched her, his gaze intense, her breaths heavy.

And then, he kissed her, brought her gently against the wall of the building as he did so; standing on tiptoe, she met his lips, her eyes closing, her arms wrapping around his neck, the city beyond them forgotten. He tasted like the remnants of that cheesecake, like sweetness, like himself, and she could feel her lipstick smearing against his lips, but for now, she didn't care. And his tongue, his _tongue,_  she couldn't remember the last time he'd kissed her beyond a peck to the lips after he'd gone days without brushing his teeth, but now, he kissed her with abandon, with passion, with all the love she knew he held within him. Hotly, she took a breath, then wrapped her lips around his again, tugged him down closer, refused to let the moment end.

When a door to the alley opened, letting a worker at the French shop pop out for a smoke, Mulder pulled away, picked up the wine, took her hand again. As he led her away from the alley, she felt her knees buckle, the alcohol in her blood making its presence known, and once they returned to the street, the passersby around them clearly couldn't discern the gravity between Mulder and her. However, when she looked at him, she saw the warmth in his cheeks, the redness of his lips, the boyish grin on his lips, so she smiled to herself, her heart beating quickly, her toes curling within her shoes.

Suddenly, she was thankful for what she'd been sure to wear beneath this dress.


	6. Exhibit B, Part II

**EXHIBIT B - APRIL 2011, 11AM**

_Pulling the shirt over her head, she handed the garment, soaked from being out in the rain, to him; after shucking off his own clothes and turning on the tub's taps, he headed away from the bathroom, sought out the washer and dryer. With two candles lit, a lavender and vanilla set, the bathroom held a warm, creamy glow, their toothbrushes sitting on their respective sides of the sink, her creams tucked away in the medicine cabinet, his shaving kit left next to the bar of handmade soap. The tub filled slowly, so as she dangled a toe into the water, she could barely submerge her nail just yet; by the time he returned, all naked and shivering, the water was only at ankle-height. She crossed her arms over her chest, asked, "When was the last time we shared a bath?"_

_Somehow, despite the expanse of her uncovered skin, he kept his gaze focused on the warm lines of her neck, on the steady pulses there._

_"Easter," he said concretely. "Last year."_

_She quirked a lip, looked down as she managed, "Well, then."_

_After the tub had finally filled, they sat within it together, her legs fully outstretched while his knees were forced to bend; she took the side closest to the taps while he took the opposite, her toes reaching his lap, their backs pressed against the white porcelain. Softly, he took her right foot into his hands, massaged her arch while his forefingers graced over her toes._

_Though the rain had been refreshing, a frozen affirmation of the spring to come, she found that the steam of the tub made her muscles go limp, her body pliant as it met with his, pieces of hair falling from her bun haphazardly splayed, rainwater dripping down her neck. Her head lolling to the side, she hummed in pleasure while he worked out a knot in her forefoot, scents of lavender and patchouli filling the bathroom, the house so quiet that she heard the far-off patter of rain as though it were a memory or a distant dream._

_And she liked the way that his legs folded around hers, how he slicked his hair back every few minutes. She liked that she could still smell the beard oil she'd bought him upon his skin. Now that they were living_ off of the land _and moving in time with their circadian rhythms, she found that they'd both put on some weight, nothing unhealthy but still something noticeable to each other, and she liked the little rolls of his stomach, liked how he filled out his jeans more._

_He switched to her left foot, and as she watched him, she tilted her head to the side, reminded herself that this was the same man who ate evidence at crime scenes, who concussed like a high school lacrosse player would, who brought her on wild chases around the country while the prospect of extraterrestrial life loomed ahead of them. Though she'd known of the extent of his passion even before she met him, the shock of how loving he was came to her nonetheless; from the way he kissed her at night to how he listened to her and remembered her little pleasures, especially during times when she was particularly cross with him, she found that Mulder was a warm lover, someone to grow old with. Though she'd once thought that he would remain a bachelor forever, condemned eternally to the couch of his messy apartment, she knew now that the world needed this man's love. Sometimes, she thought it was all that held her together._

_"You look so beautiful," he said aimlessly, and even though he'd said such things so many times over the years, she nonetheless blushed._

_He pressed his thumbs gently into her arch, relieving the intense pressure there; she felt herself sink deeper into the warm embrace of the water, her muscles relaxed and unmoving._

_"You've always been beautiful," he said as he looked down, his face that of a shy boy. She wondered if they would ever feel comfortable fully speaking their minds to each other, letting out the unintelligent and silly things that they thought about. "Pretty skin, and eyes. And I've always loved your hair."_

_She hummed a response, figured her jaw was too loose to manage words._

_"I don't know," he gave awkwardly, his hands stilling around her ankle. "I feel as though I don't say those things enough."_

_She leaned her elbow against the rim of the tub, pressed her face against her hand._

_"What things?" she asked lazily._

_"The things I think when you come home," he offered. "Or when you're near me, or when you're particularly far away."_

_"Such as?"_

_Softly, he shrugged, then met her gaze._

_"You're my favorite person," he offered. "You're my best friend, and there's no one else I'd rather spend time with."_

_Her gaze down at the water between them, she listened while he brought his hands to her calf muscle, stroked her there._

_"And it's not even...I couldn't list reasons why if I tried," he managed, pausing in order to find the proper words. "You're beautiful, intelligent, all of that, but I love you because you're you,_ just  _you. You alone make me so happy."_

_Glancing up to him, she watched the oceans within his eyes sway and quake, remembered how those seas used to never calm. Now, she could follow their tides from morning until night, could keep time with his relaxed ebbs and flows while he washed dishes, could see how leisurely they turned before he closed his eyes to sleep._

_"Knowing you're here at night makes coming home feel like such a relief," she said softly, her eyes intent on his while he softly squeezed her calf. "Though I used to think that a silent refuge of a home, someplace where I could be alone, was ideal for me, I can't imagine coming home to somewhere empty anymore. And when I see you at night, it's like all my tension fades. Or, well, not_ all, _but a significant amount of it, and it's just dinner together and some spare time before bed, but it makes me feel real again. Even when I inevitably have healthy doubts, or when I wonder how everything could've turned out differently, our evenings reaffirm that this is where I want to be, that nowhere else would feel right."_

_With the way his eyes stayed downcast, the way he shifted awkwardly and let splashes fall to the floor around the tub, she remembered why they never did this, spoke their minds properly; they preferred touches, momentary and silent expressions of meaning, but she knew that words were necessary in any relationship. She also knew with disdain that most of their longer talks were about fights they'd had, and after those fights, they would comment on their poor communication skills, a tendency that resulted in their verbal communication extending to fighting matters only. In the end, she thought, there needed to be a balance._

_"I don't know," she continued. "I just...I'm not happy all the time, and no one is, but I'm always okay. Even when I'm at my worst, I'm okay. When work makes me feel inadequate, or when I feel lost, I'm still okay, and you're a large part of the reason why. You take good care of me. I never doubt that you love me, or that I love you, and that's what keeps me together when things are hard."_

_Awkwardly, she shrugged, finished with, "You make me happy too, I guess."_

_After a pause, he gave a dry laugh, deadpanned, "What a ringing final endorsement."_

_Rolling her eyes, she dipped her fingers into the tub, flicked water toward him while he ducked away and laughed, and as rain clashed against the roof, she thought of the spongy ground outside, of how much snow this storm thankfully was not, of her polka-dot rain boots from Tractor Supply because she'd become the kind of woman who shopped there. Of course, her car was being drowned, but for now, her scope of the universe began and ended within the confines of the bathroom, the white candles creating a perimeter, the hand-towel bristling with texture, even the steam coming off of the tub taking on a life it hadn't had before._

_And he was messy, almost obnoxiously so, and sometimes, she would come home in the summer to find garden-dirt tracked all the way to the bedroom, and though he tended to stay home on most days, he never, almost absolutely never, did the laundry, claimed that he didn't understand how to wash her scrubs and therefore couldn't possibly work the machine. Though he was a good cook, he was a serial toast-burner, and the last time they hosted a dinner party - most likely the last time they'll_ ever _host a dinner party - he miraculously gave everyone but the two of them food poisoning, so suddenly, their one-bathroom house became alarmingly crowded, and the coworkers of hers that they'd invited over had been given insight into her life that she would have preferred them not to have. Sometimes, he got angry about how distant work made her but wouldn't tell her that until other problems of theirs came to light, turning a minor fight into a larger recurring theme. He sang horribly and often, especially when they played Otis Redding records while making dinner. Worst of all, he enjoyed the comedy on_ Community _and insisted upon watching it every week even though she couldn't find a discernible reason as to why that show was funny. Somehow, he managed to only snore on nights when she had a surgery early the following morning._

_"My side's getting cold," he commented as he swirled his fingertips over her ankle._

_"Do you want me to drain a little and turn the tap back on?"_

_"No."_

_"Then-"_

_Catching on, she interrupted herself, rolled her eyes, sloshed water as she shifted over to his side of the tub, as he opened his arms for her. She settled against his chest, his legs framing hers, his arms snaking around her hips._

_"Better?" she asked mundanely._

_He hummed a response, then leaned down to kiss the part of her neck he'd been eying earlier. "Much better."_

_She closed her eyes and narrowed her universe to the distance between his breaths, the bathroom's only interruptions being their presence, the patter of the rain, and the wispy flickering of the candles._


	7. And We'll Make Only Quick Decisions

Though her heels were high enough to keep her from doing so, she still stood on tiptoe to meet his lips, one of her arms wrapping around his neck and her other resting against his chest, her fingers balling his shirt. Her mind meditative and blank, she dared not count the days - weeks, months - since he had last kissed her like this, his hands strong and steady against her hips, his mouth pliant, his body so warm and male against her. By then, her lipstick had smeared on his chin, her dress riding up as he staggered her toward the bed in the apartment, the lights all off in the studio though a city glare shone through the balcony's glass doors.

As she unbuttoned his shirt, his calves skirting the mattress, she knew the moment wasn't ideal, that his medication made such things more of a challenge, that she still felt too full from dinner, but she pushed all of that aside as she forced his shirt off, then ran her fingers over his bare chest, across the expanse of familiar scars, too many of which she'd provided. _You've hurt him too,_  she reminded herself. _Just because he's hurt you more recently doesn't mean you have a right to hold a grudge._

Bringing her fingertips beneath his belt, she looked up at him, searched his eyes for hesitation, for abandonment, and when she found nothing of that variety, she unhinged his belt, let it fall to the ground with the buckle clattering against the floor. If this city held a steady state of noise, then she needed to start contributing; as he unzipped his pants, stepped out of them, she knew she would be doing just that soon enough.

Her palms against his chest, she nudged him onto the bed, so he sat back, moved toward the headboard. Although the distance made her uneasy, brought goosebumps along her arms, she found that the balcony's sliding glass doors cast an attractive urban light onto her, some distant building's lamplight shining down in a glow upon her skin, so with her hair in loose, long curls and her blood pulsing with just enough wine to make her feel warm all over, she stared him down, then softly brought her fingers to the zipper at the back of her dress.

Despite how her body protested with every movement, her desire too needy and overwhelming to care for such gestures, she eased the zipper down tooth by tooth by damned tooth, his eyes wide on her, his pupils dilating, his breaths jagged. If she were one for talk, she knew what she would ask him as her alabaster collarbone came into sight. _Do you like this? What do you think is beneath my dress? Something pink? Something red? Oh, I know how you like me in red. Like your second-to-last birthday, when I wore those garters for you. Do you remember? And I wouldn't even let you touch me, no, not allowed, not until I'd touched every single part of you, and then,_ then _you would have your turn._

The zipper halfway down her back, she tilted her head, met his gaze with fervor.

 _I used to wear stuff like that to work, even. Did you know that?_  She watched the concentrated bob of his throat, the dilation of his eyes. _Underneath my darker suits and shirts, I wore whatever I pleased. After Antarctica, I wore lingerie every day for a week, waited for you to unbutton me after work. I wanted you so badly. Could you tell? Did you ever see a slip of lace and wonder what else I was or wasn't wearing?_

 _I wanted you to look at me and see more than just the suit. I wanted you to see me beyond Agent Scully. I wanted you to kiss me and not hold back. But those things made me style my hair in a new way, purposefully stay late at your apartment, answer your two am calls even when I felt exhausted; the lingerie was for a different reason altogether. When I put on those lacy panties, all I could think of was your thick fingers pulling them off, and I would imagine your pointer and second, both so much thicker than mine, deep in my cunt. I wanted to feel every joint of yours within me, the curl of your digits hot and hard against me, my mind white with fire, my body responsive only to you. I wanted you to fuck me until my thoughts were gone, until I mindlessly begged you for more, more, more, but then, I wanted you gone, your hand moving to your cock, my breaths heavy and intense. And then, I wanted you to_ really _fuck me._

She felt her nipples press against her clothes, her body warm and her legs trembling, but nonetheless, she kept her speed slow, watched his gaze upon her. The last time he'd looked at her like this, she'd been nearly two years younger and smearing her dark lipstick on his cock while they locked themselves inside the bathroom of a mediocre French restaurant. She hadn't worn that lipstick since.

 _Maybe something red's under here, or maybe it's even better than red. Something purple, something blue? Oh, I'm so excited to see what it is! Are you excited, Mulder? I think you look excited. I know you'll like it. Maybe it's lace, or leather, buttery leather hidden beneath an angelic white dress._  Just above her breasts, the dress began to peel forward, her zipper tearing open below her waist. _Or what's better than lace, Mulder? Or leather? I think I know what's better than both of those._

The zipper at its end, she let the dress fall, her body bare beneath it, her chest rising erratically with the pace of her breaths, and he looked at her in a way she hadn't seen in weeks, in months, in so long that she hadn't realized how deeply she'd missed it.

His eyes wide with something between amazement, awe, and worship, he managed only, "Scully...."

She knelt onto the bed, crawled toward him, bracketed his hips with her knees as she leaned down to kiss him, her arms draping back around his neck. Her bare sex against his boxers, she leaned in to him, let out a heavy breath, her mind blanking and her body giving in to the stimulation, her thoughts no longer intruding.

"I take it that you liked dinner," he mumbled in a way all too like him; an instinctive smile came to her lips.

"That's one way of putting it," she said, her voice husky. Being naked in front of him made her feel endlessly powerful, his body so responsive to her every movement. She curled her fingers against his neck, felt pleasure flow through her like the wine had.

He kissed at her jaw, sucked there while he trailed his fingers down her chest, over her stomach, on top of her hipbone. Closing her eyes, her lips forming a word she wouldn't let herself say, she thought _please, Mulder, please, please, please_  while his fingers moved closer and closer to where she wanted them most.

"Mulder?" she managed.

He hummed a response, his fingers moving across her mons, his lips against her neck.

"I have to admit something to you," she said. When he didn't still, didn't pause, didn't stop touching her, she gave, "I hate New York."

Softly, he laughed against her, the sensation so foreign but so familiar that she felt tears spring to her eyes. She'd thought that this would be so much farther off, that only months of medication and therapy could allow them a chance to try this again, but she'd been wrong. She'd never been so thankful to be wrong.

"Gee, Scully." He nipped at her neck. "I couldn't tell."

"I hate New York," she managed, her voice wispy and hot as his fingers drew closer and closer, "but I had a wonderful time tonight."

"I see that," he said almost cockily, and had she not been so thankful, she would've rolled her eyes.

He pulled back from her jawline, let her rest her weight on him, nestled his face against her neck.

"We'll do this again-"

She interrupted herself as he pressed his thumb to her clitoris, her breath stilling, a moan stuck in her throat.

" _Tomorrow,_ " she forced, then tried to finish her sentence while he drew long, slow circles with his pointer. "We can - _oh_  - we can go out...go to that museum. Whatever museum you wanted to go to. _That_  one. In the afternoon, _late_  afternoon. And-"

"Actually, I was thinking we could split up tomorrow," he offered.

She stilled.

"What?"

"Just after lunch," he said. "Definitely not before."

Leaning back so that she could look him in the eyes, she asked, "Why?"

He shrugged, gave, "So we can each see the city on our own."

His fingers still moving against her, she reached down for his wrist, pulled his hand away.

"You spent all day coaxing me," she said, unsure, "and now, you want us to go off on our own."

"You said you might need some space before we even got here," he gave with annoyance. "It's space."

"Yeah, but..."

She trailed off, for he was right; she _had_  wanted space, but now, she wanted nothing more than to be in bed with him, to wake up late with him, to only leave this tiny apartment when they absolutely needed to, to spend the rest of this vacation in the proximity they used to keep. When he had been pushing her aside and refusing to see a therapist, she'd wanted space, but now, the thought of spending an afternoon separate made her heart pound.

"I take it back," she ventured, pretended she couldn't hear how desperate she sounded. "No space. Just us for the remainder of this vacation. Whatever you want to do, I'm in. Show me why you like this city tomorrow. I want to know."

"Scully," he said with disdain, "I really think we could use an afternoon on our own. Just an afternoon. You can go to the bookstores downtown, or-"

"I don't want to," she insisted. "Why don't you understand that?"

And then she met his gaze, her breaths too warm, and though his eyes had gone to a greyscale in the dark, she sobered as she read them, her body feeling suddenly too bare, the room becoming stuffy and acrid and stagnant.

"I've told you before," she said coldly, the memory coming back to her with alarming clarity. "In the car, before that case with the...the sleep deprivation experiment. Back when I was still at Quantico. I told you, Mulder, about that spring break. I told you that I hated New York."

"Scully, how was I supposed to remember-"

"You knew," she said with conviction, his words ignored. Mostly to herself, she asked, "Why would you take me here if you knew?"

"I didn't know, Scully," he gave flatly.

She glanced down, closed her eyes, the revelation bringing a cold sweat to her skin.

"The boarding passes," she said uncomfortably. "You said yours had printed wrong. You said the booking date was off because of our printer, but it wasn't."

"Scully-"

"You lied to me."

Looking up at him, she saw the confirmation she'd been searching for though she'd wished so deeply that she were wrong.

"It said your ticket had been purchased three days before mine, but you claimed that was a misprint even though it wasn't one."

Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm her racing heart, to keep the tears out of her eyes, to ignore how naked she felt in front of him.

"I...you used to ask first," she managed, her voice sounding more hurt than she wanted to let on to being.

She watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed hard, not in shame but in defeat. Suddenly, she felt nauseous.

"You used to ask weeks in advance before you went somewhere without me," she said. "You'd...you'd booked earlier, just one ticket, then adjusted to two after my incident at work. You weren't going to take me here, but then, I got sick, so you had to."

"Scully, I-"

"Were you even going to tell me where you were going?"

"Scully-"

"You weren't even going to tell me," she said, had trouble masking the betrayal she felt. "What's so horrible here that you wouldn't even tell me?"

" _Scully-_ "

"I know it's not another woman," she said even though she didn't. "Why would you come here without telling me first?"

He took a long breath, the spaces between her heartbeats filled with rage and despair, her hopes for them quickly leaving.

"Online," he began slowly, "I showed some interest in psychokinesis, and someone in Manhattan-"

" _God._ "

She stood, staggered up, brought her palm over her eyes as she wished she could curl up and shrink smaller, smaller, smaller until she disappeared altogether, all of this so far away from her, no one able to judge her or hurt her anymore. That was why he'd been in a decent mood, had shown any interest in her at all; he was about to feed the addiction, held the prospect of a fix so fervently that he'd felt a purpose again. As they'd walked around the city, he'd been excited for that fix, and all night at dinner, he'd talked her up because fixes made him feel confident, and he went along with everything else because why not indulge himself? But she knew him when the fixes were few and far between, knew how he raised his voice at her and couldn't get out of bed, knew how he would rely on her for so much that she felt herself drifting away, her life nothing but caregiving, her bed empty though she expended so much love each day.

The reality was that this day had been an anomaly, one they were supposed to keep track of and understand. Though she knew nothing of his therapy, she knew enough to realize how harmful a habit this had become for him, isolating him from the rest of the world, keeping him from working. At this point, it wasn't a hobby, instead was a compulsion he needed to feed, and he needed help, psychological help, or else he would continue harming himself. But he wouldn't get help, and as she felt a tear leak onto her nose, she forcefully pulled her dress back on, zipped it up in a mere second, slid on her shoes and hung her purse over her shoulder while she made her way to the apartment's door.

" _Scully,_ " he called quickly, standing up and going to her, reaching out for her. "I'm sorry. Really, I would've told you-"

" _Stop._ "

She reached for the door, kept her gaze ahead, hoped to express _don't follow me_  in her silence, and thankfully, as she left the apartment and closed the door behind her, she found herself alone, the hallway quiet and dimly lit, no sound coming from beyond their door.

A quotation about bangs and whimpers came to mind while she leaned toward the door, her forehead and the tip of her nose touching its white paint as she forced herself to breathe. Though she didn't know where to go, she knew one thing for sure: if she spent another moment in his company, one of them would say something regrettable, so she moved away from the door, momentarily didn't care that she'd left her coat inside.

And he'd lied. He'd lied to her for the sake of the addiction. He'd dragged her to this awful city so that he could prioritize the addiction. Even when work left her passed out in a puddle of piss, he still thought of the addiction before he thought of her. Though she felt that she was forgiving person, she knew that there were some things she wouldn't be able to forgive, and as she walked down the stairs of the building, as she stepped outside into the horrid chill, as she felt that uncomfortable stickiness staining her thighs, she knew that she wouldn't be able to forgive this.

Staring in either direction on the sidewalk, she chose to go left. Around her, the city was indifferent, and for once, she felt thankful for this horrible place; in New York, she could be angry, and as she pressed on to some unknown location, she chose that emotional path.

She wondered what Mulder would be doing at that moment, then decided that, for once, she genuinely didn't care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from the song "Bear" by the Antlers.


	8. Exhibit C

**EXHIBIT C - AUGUST 2011**

_Staggering down the stairs, she tried to catch her breath, her hands shaking, her mind filled with the same terrified mantra she heard whenever she woke up this way; the repetitive_ I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared _resounded while she made it through the living room, found that the study's closed door still held some light beneath it. The rest of the house was dark, and hours ago, she'd gone to bed alone while Mulder insisted he would be up in a few minutes, and after a combination of surgical training and being on-call in the emergency room, she'd felt spent enough to fall asleep without him. However, one of her recurring nightmares had woken her, and though the dream itself hadn't stuck in her mind, the fear it left behind had taken over her body. She always felt emotions in this way, one so overwhelming and somatic that only diligent breathing exercises or creature comforts could calm her; mental reassurance and positive self-talk hardly helped, so she needed something extra, either chemical or physical, and when she'd turned over in bed to find herself alone, she'd decided to seek out_ physical _first._

_Gripping the door handle so hard that her knuckles blanched, she threw open the study's door, her chest heaving, her body shaking, and as usual, Mulder sat at the desk, his feet up on top of newspapers and photographs, his laptop on his outstretched legs. When she'd asked him to bed, he'd been in the same position._

_"Hey," he said, his gaze at the screen as he typed. "I know, I know. Just give me five more minutes, okay? There's something I want to finish off."_

_While she leaned against the door jamb, she tried to find words, her anxiousness making her shudder._

_"Scully, you ought to see this," he said with amazement, a little smile on his lips. "There's...it's_ science, _pure science. And it's all coming together now, the things we used to do. It's all starting to mean something."_

_Sharply, she inhaled, her mind too full, and thankfully, that sound garnered his attention, for he glanced to her with concern, and suddenly - for once - she started to take priority._

_"Hey," he asked, fear in his eyes as he stared at her crumbling figure. "What's wrong?"_

_Taking a deep breath, she managed, "Dream."_

_"Shit, Scully." He tapped his lap like he used to tap her pillow, left the laptop on the desk in front of him as he rested his feet on the floor. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there. Come here."_

_She forced herself to walk steadily, to appear better off than she felt, and once she reached his chair, he pulled her into his arms, let her rest against him on the chair, her body limp on his, her arms wrapping around him while his held her close. With her forehead against his neck, she softly closed her eyes._

_"It's okay now," he whispered to her, his comforting voice - one she hadn't heard in months now - bringing tears to her eyes. "You're safe. I'm right here."_

_He gingerly stroked her back, the sweat stains on her pajamas overlooked. Then, she took a deep breath, wanted to take in the familiarity of him, but he held no aroma of his deodorant, the tea tree soap they kept in the shower, a day's sweat; instead, she could smell days-old laundry, sebum, a boys' locker room stench, and momentarily, she wondered when he'd last showered._

_He kissed her forehead, then tugged his chair closer to the desk._

_"I'm just going to finish this, okay?" he said, his hands favoring the laptop's keyboard. "And then, I'll take you to bed."_

_So she sat there uncomfortably, her body rigid against his, and with every key-clack, she cringed, the sounds heavy on her hypersensitive ears. Like a child, she clung to him, her legs slipping down the chair, and though she tried to match her breathing in time with his, the sounds of his typing were too distracting, her mind overstimulated, the bodily position uncomfortable. He'd let his beard grow out not in the careful way she liked but in an unkempt, devil-may-care fashion; hair bristled against her face, the sensation oily and itchy. As he typed, he craned toward the computer, shifted her awkwardly against him; she felt helpless, uncouth, clingy like those women who hung all over their husbands during their dinner parties and displayed affection in the face of their guests' grimaces. Held by him, she still had her hands shake, her thoughts race; his touch seemed to do nothing._

_"Mulder?" she asked quietly after a long while._

_He hummed a response, still tapping away at his keys._

_"I...I'm feeling better," she lied. "I think I'm going to head back to bed."_

_"Okay," he said._

_Then, she peeled herself from his body, wavered as she stood but ultimately balanced, his eyes cast on the screen while she led herself out of the room, toward the stairs, onto the first step._

He isn't comforting anymore, _her mind added to the already-terrified mantra._ He can see you at your worst and still ignore you then. Remember last week, when you brought home fresh chicken and rainbow chard from the farmer's market you went to alone, and though you made dinner from scratch, he never ate a single bite of it? Remember when he waved you off two weeks ago as you left for that weekend conference? Remember how you sat through the whole thing scared out of your mind because, even though you'd left plenty of food and clean clothes, you didn't know if he would be able to manage without you? Remember how, when you returned, he'd been asleep on the couch, tightly folded in, his back to you, his eyes shut, no greeting offered? Remember how his first words to you the next day were asking to take the car?

 _Taking a deep breath, she tried to quell the thoughts, but in the face of this predicament, she forced herself to understand that Mulder had two modes, joviality when he was doing what he called_ work _and despair when he wasn't, and that neither of those extremes had space for her. At one point, she'd tried to ask about his research, but somewhere between the words_ Reddit _and_ extraterrestrial DNA _, she tended to lose focus, her mind jumping to the x-files, her son, her sister, her body, all the things she feared and felt remorse toward; those conversations were too heavy for her, so eventually, they stopped happening, and now, she was left to return to bed alone while he typed away at something that would only make her upset._

At one point in your lives, this brought you together, _she reminded herself. But now, it was darkness in her home, and she thought she'd made it clear that she didn't want such darkness, not after all they'd been through. After years of fearing fellow agents, those beyond her window, anyone but Mulder, sometimes even Mulder, she wanted to be able to spend each day knowing that all the people around her in some way cared about her. At the hospital, she'd made work-friends, the kind she could share lunch and nothing else with; the local librarians would excitedly call_ Dana, Dana, Dana, I found this book you'll love _whenever she and her canvas bag full of returns came in; their farm-owning neighbors were fond of seeing what she and Mulder could whip up using their homemade cream. She'd wanted to build a life of love, of stability, and for the most part, she'd built just that._

_However, stability was an illusion, and as friends and family had told her, she could lie about wanting that picket-fenced life, but in the end, she craved adventure, a daytime kind that was over when she wanted to go to bed each evening. As she'd spent midnights chasing monsters with him, she'd known that Mulder was continuous adventure, brash love, unrelenting passion that would never be quenched; he brought excitement to her linear life, and when she found herself acting too stoic, he always managed to surprise her. There was something about a man who would kiss her in the pouring rain, worship her body on a Wednesday evening simply because he wanted to, try new recipes even if the end result was a disaster, take her on vacations she would've never permitted herself to take, reach into her soul and make sure that every little want of hers could come to light. There was something about a man who loved her so wholly that, even in treacherous situations, she felt secure._

_But adventurous people were dangerous, and as she ascended the stairs, she thought of rock climbers like Joe Simpson, who nearly died on one expedition but nonetheless went on multiple others; that thirst truly couldn't be quenched, and though there was beauty in such relentlessness, there was also pain. Though she couldn't ask Mulder to change - and though, deep down, she didn't want him to - she felt her heart pound as she climbed the stairs, a deep discomfort coming over her while she tried in vain to remind herself that everything between them was okay._ But is it? _she asked herself._ Is it really okay if you're this scared? Is it really okay if leaving him for more than day scares the shit out of you? Is it really okay when he reaches those depressive funks and barely speaks to you, and when he does speak to you, only does so in angry tones? Is it really okay that, given a choice between having you or having the work in his life, you don't know which he'd choose?

_Coming into the bedroom, she forced herself to stop that useless thinking, to fixate on something else, something mindless, like what she would have for lunch tomorrow. At the thought, her nervous stomach turned, so she quickly changed the topic, but her anxiety had already risen again, her body finding new fear in a long-passed dream, and as she stood in the bedroom, she quivered._

He's never going to comfort you again.

_She braced her hands against the bed, her wrists aching as she tried to force herself to breathe, but before she could regain her bearings, her knees buckled, her legs useless, and she let herself slip toward the floor, her back pressing against the side of the bed. Managing to bend her knees up, she leaned her head between them, closed her eyes, forced herself to take control of her racing heart, and as her chest heaved, she started to feel tears on her cheeks, the smallness she felt becoming dehumanizing, her head throbbing with tired panic._

He'll be up here soon, _she reassured herself though she hardly believed the statement._ He'll be up, and he'll take you to bed, and he'll hold you in that way that always makes you feel better, so close that you almost feel like the two of you are one person, so close that your heartbeats intrinsically match his. He _will_  comfort you again. And then you'll sleep, and you'll go to work, and you'll forget all about this, and everything will be better. Everything will be as it once was. When you wake up, everything will be fine again.

_But when she woke, she found herself groggily cast onto the bedroom floor, her body aching with residual fear, her hair askew and sticking to her face, her alarm sounding recklessly throughout the window-lit room. Sitting up, she realized she'd never made it to the bed, and as she looked across the mattress, she knew with no surprise that Mulder hadn't either._


	9. The Cause is Ozymandian

Brisk February winds blew, each reminding her of her bareness beneath the dress and of her lack of coat, and as she tottered forward, her feet aching in her heels, she searched the line of buildings for somewhere, _anywhere,_  that would still be open on a Wednesday night. Though the city never slept, it seemed to have taken a nap right when she needed reprieve, the artisanal cupcake shops and green cafes all closed for the evening, bookstores and record stores and boutiques darkened and greying. Even the pizza place on the corner by the river had closed its dining room, this whole sleeping portion of the city stark in comparison to the bright lights across the river, the black-and-gold skyline taunting her with her every sloppy step. _See, Dana?_  the city beckoned. _I hate you just as much as you hate me._

Minutes, hours, she lost track of time as she ventured down one street, the roads somehow desolate, the wine starting to fade so that she now felt jitters in place of delight. Could she return to the apartment, or was it too soon? Would he want to talk? As she noticed her hands shaking - from the cold or from her anxiousness, she knew not - she figured she hadn't the energy for a fight, so she pressed on instead, ignored the nagging in the back of her mind that reminded her of how he could never sleep after their fights, would toss and turn instead until she sat up in bed and forced a conversation out of them both. Though she knew he would be awake when she returned - and she always returned - she held onto the hope that, if she stayed out late enough, she would find him sound asleep and be able to rest until morning, no fights between them just yet.

And what would this fight accomplish? As she thought of his lie again, tears returned to her eyes, the cold winds biting at her and forcing them down her cheeks in a way that she'd so desperately fought. Though he'd shown so many signs of improvement, she'd thought she was smarter than to see quick improvement as lasting recovery, to think that an addiction would cease with ease. Old habits died hard though calling his addiction a habit understated it so greatly; she should have known better than to enable him, and she should have seen the signs - the easy kiss on the main deck, the way he'd held her hand at dinner, how he'd touched her in all the right places even though he hadn't touched her in weeks - because, in the end, that was all the result of a future fix, all elements of how he functioned best when he enabled the addiction. Her stomach turned, but she kept walking, her toes going numb, her chest heavy with the cold.

And it would've been easier if this Mulder hadn't looked like the Mulder who'd loved her, like the one who would abandon his aliens and conspiracies for a chance to take her to bed, like the one who'd said he wouldn't bring the darkness back into their home. It would have been easier to recognize his change in demeanor had she not been so relieved to see what she'd thought was his love for her. Was it really love if it only came forward when he was about to get a fix? _No,_  she answered for herself, _it absolutely is not._

In the distance, a light shone out, a pub called The Glossy Rudder beckoning to her in all of its English and open glory, so she staggered ahead, wiped the back of her hand against her cheeks in hope of appearing stoic, opened the heavy wooden door with a tired heave. As she stepped inside, her skin prickled with a burning sensation, the air a woodstove kind of warm that contrasted uncomfortably with how cold she felt. The place played fiddle music over speakers, its one element of the twenty-first century; otherwise, the moulded wooden walls were covered in tartan and English emblems, all mismatched European tchotchkes that, despite their differences, agreed that alcohol and nostalgia provided proper respite. The bar, solid mahogany with enough scuffs to be comfortable and casual, held a few patrons, and the dim lighting gave her hope that, in this place of wooden tones and dark liquor, no one would ask her too many questions. Sitting down two stools away from any other patrons, she hung her purse on a hook below the bar, folded her hands over where someone had forcibly scratched _fuck_  into the wood.

"You're looking like a G-an-T."

She stilled, then glanced to her left, where a man with a thin strawberry-blonde ponytail sat, his suit too nice for this bar, his eyes blue and youthful though his face showed deep wrinkles. Although he was just barely overweight, she could see in his face that he carried extra all from alcohol, his paired beer and water glasses telling her plenty about why he'd come to the bar on a Wednesday night. As he took a breath, his chest looked heavy, as though each movement took more energy than his body could ever muster.

"Excuse me?" she asked, then swallowed uncomfortably as she heard how frail she sounded.

"I said," he took a sip of his beer, "a G-an-T might do you some good."

"A what?"

He huffed a little laugh, a genuine smile coming to his lips.

"Gin and tonic," he explained benignly, then motioned for the bartender. "You don't come to places like this often."

Though she went to answer _no_  instinctively, he seemed clear in that the statement was imperative.

"I'm Greg," he said, then ordered her a drink, asked for top-shelf gin that made her eyes bug.

"I'm really not interested," she forced out, her male bullshit quota exhausted for the evening, her mind concocting escape routes from this bar.

"Hey," he gave as though he'd said such a thing hundreds of times beforehand, "I'm not coming on to you, I swear. Really, I'm not. Conviviality and nothing else, that's my motto. Plus, I can smell _married_  from a mile away, and you reek of it."

She paused awkwardly, didn't know how to respond, wasn't sure if a denial of that word would help her at all.

"Let me guess." He took another sip of his beer. "Been together ten years, married eight. He has kids by a previous marriage and wants more. You don't."

Looking down at the _fuck_  on the table, she murmured, "You're making me uncomfortable."

"Fine. I digress." The bartender brought her the drink. "That's on my tab. I don't care if you drink it. Right now, I'm being sued, so the lower my net worth, the better."

She wasn't sure she understood that logic.

"What are you being sued for?"

The moment it left her lips, she regretted the question.

Smirking to her, he folded his hands on the bar - he had remarkably well-kept nails - and said, "Tit for tat. You've got to show me yours."

Taking a sharp, annoyed breath, she went to speak, but he cut her off, interjected, "Not like _that._  Seriously. It's a fair trade; tell me why you're here, and I'll do the same. Capisci?"

She ventured a glance at the gin and tonic, thought of Mulder back at the apartment, and decided to take a sip.

"My...husband," she began as she set the drink down, her words carefully calculated and vague, "has been absent lately, so I took on more shifts at work. After an...incident, I was granted extra paid leave in order to recover, so he decided to take me here on vacation."

"That's swell," Greg gave. "What have you done together?"

Softly, she smiled, the memory bringing the look involuntarily to her lips.

"We went to the main deck of the Empire State Building, and then, he took me out for a nice dinner."

"Cliche."

Stunned, she glanced awkwardly at Greg, who rolled his eyes and gave with annoyance, " _Cute._  Nice. Straight out of the _good guy_  handbook."

Huffing, she stared at the _fuck,_  said, "He was trying."

"And that's impressive somehow?"

"Yes, it is."

"But you're here alone now."

"I...am."

"Why's that?"

With a challenge in her eyes, she stared him down, took a long swig of her drink.

"I hate this city," she said, anger bubbling into her voice. "I hate the culture, and I hate the people, and I hate the place, and it's _disgusting._  It's grimy and crowded. No one here is ever happy. And though we never exactly discussed my dislike for this place, he knew but brought me here anyway."

Furrowing his brow, Greg asked, "Why did he do that?"

She took a deep breath.

"Because he has interests here," she said, her words measured, her voice close to quivering though she forced herself to remain stoic, "that are more important to him than I am."

Shrugging, Greg offered, "You can't be sure of that, can you?"

"He booked himself on a flight here before my incident," she said, then swallowed a long gulp of gin. "He hadn't planned on telling me he was going, so when I ended up on leave, he just booked me a ticket too, acted like this would be a vacation."

"He'd never intended for you to find out about the real reason."

"Exactly."

"But you found out."

Uncomfortably, she shifted.

"Yes."

"What're you going to do now?"

She gave him a look that asked _are you kidding me?_ , so he rolled his eyes, insisted, "Not _now_  now, but later. When you have to see him again."

She took a deep breath, her focus on the _fuck_  while the background music shifted to bagpipes. A couple of seats away, three friends began a tipsy toast. Somewhere within the restaurant, fish and chips were being cooked, the scent wafting over and making her feel queasy.

"I don't know," she offered.

"What do you want to say to him?"

She gave Greg an incredulous look, so he shrugged.

"I'm a psychiatrist," he offered. "Sometimes, I can't turn that part of my brain off."

Her eyes narrowing, she tried to change the subject, said, "Tit for tat. Why're you being sued?"

"Slept with a patient. If you've run off after a fight, why hasn't this husband of yours called?"

"What?"

"Your bag," Greg said, glancing down at the hook. "You haven't checked it once since you sat down, and I haven't heard a ringtone."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Sorry," he gave awkwardly. "I like reading people. Shrink habit. Not that I'm even a good shrink to begin with."

"You slept with a patient," she scoffed, nearly spat. "I think that disqualifies you from competence altogether."

Raising his eyebrows, he gave a half-smirk, took a sip of his beer, then asked, "What's your name?"

"My name?"

"Yes, your name."

Momentarily, she thought of lying but knew she couldn't endure another lie.

"Dana," she said.

"Well, _Dana,_ " he said, "why hasn't he called?"

"He knows to give me space."

"So you fight often."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't need to."

"We don't fight often."

"But you often disagree."

She paused.

"We have our differences," she gave, trying to end the conversation.

"Does he adapt to those differences, or are you the one left filling in the cracks?"

Though she went to answer with _of course he adapts_ , she found that her tongue caught on that lie, and as she remembered her predicament, how she'd moulded to New York while Mulder had elicited a fix, she wouldn't let herself speak.

Crassly, Greg smirked, but underneath the look was genuine remorse; though he found delight in her predictability, she knew that all psychiatrists must share such an expectation, a knowledge of the human condition and its faults. Sure, seeing a patient who was battling addiction fall back into their dark place again was predictable to the point that watching it happen proved all of one's psychiatric training to be true, but such a fall showed the fragility of human beings, proved that time and work didn't necessarily merit success. In a way, it was beautiful in how all humans were connected, but in another, it was deeply, darkly sad.

"Let me tell you a story, Dana," he said, then took a long gulp of beer. "It's about why this city is shit."

She sipped her gin. "Alright."

"Sapokanikan."

"What's that?"

"Sapokanikan," he repeated, "was Greenwich Village before..."

He flapped his hand disdainfully.

"Before all _that_  happened," he finished.

"And what was Sapokanikan like?"

"Lenape trading grounds," he explained. "Everything there went swiggity-swell until the Dutch had this _brilliant_  idea to come over and sell tobacco."

"Tobacco," she echoed, thinking of the cigarettes at the bottom of her purse.

"Yeah, and the Dutch had another great idea and leveled the whole place down, turning it into somewhere called New Amsterdam."

"Is that really true?"

"I'm iffy on the details."

"Where did you learn this?"

He shrugged.

"A bar, probably," he said. "Anyway, you have this land, and Manhattan's actually named for a Lenape word, something meaning 'many hills,' but there aren't any hills anymore. I'm not sure I want to know where those hills are now. Or what happened to the people who lived among them."

"I take it that the history's not well documented."

"I mean," he gave in between swigs of beer, "one article praises the Dutch while another despises them, so really, it's anyone's bet as to what happened. The 1600s were too long ago for any of us living folks to remember. In the end, all we can go off of is what's here in front of us: skyscrapers, memorials, fast-talking people, touristic consumption. Oh, and damn good pizza."

"So this place was beautiful once," she figured, "but now, it's ruins of what it once represented."

"If you want to get all philosophical, then I guess so."

"What's the point of the story if not to get philosophical?"

"I don't know." He grinned. "Doesn't really make much sense to me. When I've got a good thing going, I try not to mess it up, but they seemed to mess that place - this place - up. Sure, we got Mark Twain and whatnot, but we lost those hills, and, let me tell you, I like hills a hell of a lot more than I like Mark Twain."

Bittersweetly, she smiled.

"Sometimes, we live in the ruins of what we once held so dear because we're unsure who we are without them," she gave, her eyes down.

"Yeah, I guess." Greg finished his beer. "That's a moral you could draw. Personally, I think it's just a good way to remember that, if you lose your hills, you get shitholes like Times Square."

Softly, she managed a laugh.

"I'm sorry about your miserable vacation," he said and sounded genuine.

"Thank you," she gave, unsure of the proper response for such a thing.

"Relationships are hard," he said, nodding. "People make them harder, though. That whole _free will_  thing. If we gave more of a damn about ourselves individually, we'd all have an easier time."

Furrowing her brow, she asked, "Why individually?"

"Because we can't control anything but ourselves," Greg said as though that insight were the most obvious idea in the world, and somehow, though the statement took her by surprise, she found that it was. "If we start just doing what we believe instead of hoping on what others will believe, we'll probably all get along better."

"But people can change," she countered, not aggressively but believably; she wanted him to affirm her statement.

Smiling, he shook his head.

"People may learn, and people may grow," he said, "but they sure as hell don't change, Dana."

She swallowed uncomfortably, her gin two sips away from done. For now, she decided to take one of those sips.

"You want him to change," Greg diagnosed. "You want something out of him, but he won't budge."

She sighed.

"I want things to be good again," she gave. "I want things to be the way they once were."

"The nature of life is that things will never again be the way they once were."

She chewed her lip uncomfortably.

"Unless you're talking about politics," Greg corrected. "Then it's just the same shit over and over until we all die or forget about it."

Ignoring that comment, she asked, "How do you live with it? With knowing it'll never be that good again?"

"That's... _dark._ "

"Isn't that what you're saying?" she asked. "What am I missing?"

"I never said your life would never be as good as it once was," he said, shaking his head fervently. "I just said that what you two had together is never going to go back to being exactly the way it once was. Impermanence, nature of life, foundation of us all. The only Constance is change. Constant, I mean."

"Still, how do you live with it?"

"You find happiness in other places."

"So I'll never be happy with him again."

"That's not what I said."

She huffed a breath.

"You'd make a horrible therapist."

Giving a genuine laugh, he said, "Good therapists don't sleep with their patients. I know what I'm about."

"Answer my question."

He took her in, drank in a long glance at her, and as she met his gaze, she felt awkward and lanky, so she reached for her drink, downed the last of it. While he folded his hands, he furrowed his brow in thought, measured his words more carefully than any man who smelled that much like booze should have been able to.

"I'm gonna let you in on a secret, Dana," he said as he motioned to the bartender for another beer, "but you've got to keep it quiet 'cause if everyone knows about it, then I'm out of a job. Or, at least, the clients who keep me afloat - oddly enough not the ones who truly need my help - will realize that they don't need me anymore, and suddenly, I'll go broke. Keep it quiet, okay? But take it to heart 'cause I know it's what you need to hear."

The bartender brought Greg a beer, Scully another gin that she wouldn't let herself touch.

"And what's that?" she asked.

The bar blurred into brass and wood, Greg suddenly reminding her of her younger brother waxing philosophical though he probably didn't know what he was talking about. Back in high school, beer used to turn Charlie into Aristotle, but she always found that, come morning, his musings were more Hallmark than spiritual.

"Well," Greg began after a hearty sip of beer, "though your husband may do things that piss you off, and though he may make your life a living hell for no discernible reason, he hasn't done shit to hurt your happiness. That's all on you, Dana."

Uncomfortably, she asked, "What do you mean?"

"The last time you fought," Greg propositioned, "how did it end?"

"He apologized, and I accepted," she said quickly, upset that she could remember their last fight with such ease.

"Did you accept because he proved himself remorseful, or did you accept because you wanted the topic to go away?"

After a moment spent clenching her jaw, she didn't speak, so Greg took that silence as a response.

"You see, Dana," he said, and with the glass of water next to him still full, she could sense his hangover in the morning. Maybe he wouldn't even remember her. "When he does things, you let him off the hook, but you still let those things hurt you."

"I'm not sure that I'm at liberty to decide whether or not things hurt me."

"Well, maybe not emotionally, no, but fundamentally, you could realize that, in the end, not all of his actions are directly related to you."

"You're being antagonistic."

"Let me make my point."

She paused.

"Fine," she gave.

"Your happiness is yours alone, Dana," he said. "No one else can control that other than you, and if you blame others for your lack of it, you'll only hurt yourself. You could be unhappy in a fruitful marriage, or you could be perfectly happy in a fruitless one, all depending on your choices about happiness."

"You can't call hurt an emotion but label happiness as a choice. It's an oxymoron." She wasn't sure she'd used that word correctly.

"Happiness is a choice, a fundamental choice, because if it weren't, rich people wouldn't be such annoying, greedy assholes," Greg said. "And your happiness is about _you,_  not about your husband. _You_  create space in which you feel fulfilled. _You_  work toward what you want out of life. We only get so many years, Dana, and I'd guess you want to make those good, right? So choose your own happiness for once, and stop blaming him for your lack of it."

"That doesn't help me help him," she countered. "I can't help him heal if I keep putting my needs above his. I'm not the one who's sick."

"He's sick?"

 _Oh._  A drink ago, she'd been careful not to mention the depression and addiction and other more uncomfortable words.

"Just...go with it," she forced out. "He needs me. I can't just start meditating on how I have to _choose_  my wellbeing; I need to support him."

"And what good has this caregiving done for you?" Greg asked honestly. "You put time and energy into two things: work and him. Then, you have some _incident_  at work, and he takes you to a city you hate for purely selfish reasons. It doesn't take a genius to see that your energy is being wasted."

" _Stop._ "

So he stopped. Silently, he took a swig of his beer, and under her gaze, he grabbed menu, mused over the pub fare. Glancing beneath the bar, she reached into her purse, checked her phone but found no new calls or messages. Then, she went for the second glass of gin.

"If I order some fries," Greg asked, "will you share them with me? My treat."

"How do I choose myself without hurting him?"

At that, Greg met her glance, quirked a lip.

"That's not something I can answer," he said.

"But if you were to do it yourself in the same situation," she pressed, "how would you do it?"

"I'd re-evaluate my reasons for living the way I'm living," he said casually. "I wasn't kidding about the fries."

"And what would you do if you couldn't lose those parts of your life, the parts with the negative energies?"

"Nothing's ever truly negative or positive, not emotionally at least, and you're never actually stuck," Greg said. "At least, not you personally."

"What if there's no way out?"

"There's always a way out."

"What if you don't _want_  to get out?"

"Then you stay."

"But what if staying means that this all remains the same and that nothing gets better?"

He folded his hands over the menu, kept his eyes locked on hers, and suddenly, she sobered, brought her gaze to her lap.

"Then I leave him," she said, her voice far-out, her mind clear on that thought and hazy on everything else.

"You said it," Greg emphasized, "not me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from the song "Sapokanikan" by Joanna Newsom.


	10. Exhibit D

**EXHIBIT D - DECEMBER 2011**

_Though she'd had one on her arm plenty of times - and though she knew how to use one as if the actions were second-nature - Scully still grimaced as her doctor brought the blood pressure cuff over her sleeve, as the cuff constricted. It was always strange to watch another woman take her vitals, go about the motions she herself used at work every day. Did everyone have the same little tendencies, or did some make the process more individualized? Doctor Jennings had warmed up the stethoscope between her clean fingers before placing it against Scully's skin, an action Scully herself never bothered to take. In the swollen silence that followed, she remembered how Mulder'd told her in the past that Scully herself had horrible bedside manner._

_"One-ten over fifty," Doctor Jennings said, then released the cuff, removed the velcro from Scully's arm, and slung the stethoscope back around her neck. "A little low, but that's always been your normal. You used to run, right?"_

_Awkwardly, Scully nodded while she sat on the examination table._

_"Used to," she confirmed._

_Taking the clipboard with the paper file on it - Scully liked that her physician had yet to go digital - Doctor Jennings looked down the list of standard checkups, a list Scully had grown to memorize._

_"Do you have an exercise regimen nowadays?" the doctor asked._

_Taking a deep breath, Scully admitted, "More or less."_

_"Thirty minutes a day?"_

_Scully tapped her Fitbit._

_"I get my steps in."_

_The doctor gave her a look, then said, "I find that most people who wear those things tend to be out of shape."_

_"Really?"_

_"It's not the most accurate survey, but there's certainly a pattern."_

_Scully had tried to get Mulder to wear one, a two-for-one deal at Best Buy swaying her, but he'd refused._

_"When was your last period?" the doctor asked._

_Scully thought for a moment, counted the days, then said, "The twentieth of October."_

_"So you've missed one."_

_"That can't be a shock," Scully shrugged off. "Plus, I've been irregular since...I've been irregular for a while now."_

_"Do I need to give you a talk on menopause, or-"_

_"It's fine," Scully said, quickly nodding._

_"Have you had any menopause symptoms since your last checkup?" the doctor asked as she scribbled something down on her clipboard._

_"Some," Scully offered._

_"Like what?"_

_Shrugging, Scully gave, "Hot flashes on occasion, night sweats, insomnia, nightmares-"_

_"Nightmares?"_

_Swallowing hard, Scully nodded._

_"Nightmares," she confirmed._

_"What kinds of nightmares?"_

_"I can never remember them," Scully explained uncomfortably, "but they always leave me shaken."_

_Though she'd spoken about those dreams to Mulder plenty of times, something about watching her doctor's brow furrow made her feel deeply uneasy, the dreams seeming more shameful and dark than they actually were. It was just a symptom, not a dire diagnosis, and of course, it was best for her doctor to know all of her symptoms, but nonetheless, she felt bare in front of Doctor Jennings about something so small._

_"During the day," her doctor asked, "do you ever feel shaken as though you've had one of these dreams even though you know you haven't?"_

_Flummoxed, Scully asked, "Why would that happen? I can't dream if I'm awake."_

_"Let me rephrase," her doctor said. "Do you ever find yourself incredibly anxious when such a feeling is irrational?"_

_"I don't think so," Scully said, shifting uneasily upon the examination table._

_"Have you had any traumatic experiences within the past year?"_

_"No, of course not."_

_"How can you describe_ being shaken _after these dreams?"_

_Scully took a deep breath, then gave, "I find that my thoughts race and become repetitive. A lot of times, I sweat through my clothes. My hands feel shaky, and I'm hypersensitive after them."_

_"How much caffeine do you consume in a day?"_

_"A cup of black tea in the morning and maybe coffee in the afternoon," Scully said. "I really don't see why this is pertinent."_

_"Have you ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, Dana?"_

_Freezing, Scully stared down at her lap, the air in the room thick and sanitary, the walls so white that she felt they were giving her a headache. After her abduction, she'd been in a room like this one, hospital psychiatrists trying to assess her mental state after what they could only label as_ kidnapping _had ended with her miraculous recovery; they'd asked her question upon question, if she'd like to have a rape kit taken, and for every detail of her experiences to the point that she didn't understand whose wellbeing the meeting had intended to prioritize. While in elementary school, she'd been forced into a guidance counselor's office and asked to sketch her feelings - a blue-crayoned portrait of the sea, a shark bloodily consuming her father, and the rest of her family onshore with tears the size of their mitten-hands - after an outburst in class. During her time with the Bureau, she'd gone through evaluation after evaluation, had proven competency and mental soundness time and time again, and though she'd sought counseling at one point, she found that her problems were best kept inside, where pointless matters weren't scrutinized and where she could prioritize what she concretely knew was her wellbeing. She didn't need a psychologist to tell her she was mentally healthy, so of course she'd never experienced anything like what Doctor Jennings had proposed._

_"No," Scully gave._

_"Do you see a therapist?"_

_"No."_

_Then, Doctor Jennings took a sheet from beneath Scully's form on the clipboard and started writing; craning her neck, Scully tried to read the inscription but couldn't focus on the words on the page._

_"It's a referral," Doctor Jennings said as she wrote. "Eugenia Thesbody. Fairy tale name, I know. She specializes in anxiety and panic."_

_"I don't-"_

_"Dana, though I know that doctors make the worst patients, I have a hard time believing that you chalked these up to being_ dreams _when they hold every symptom of nocturnal panic attacks."_

_Huffing, Scully said, "If these were panic attacks, I'd know it."_

_"How many of them have you had?"_

_"I don't know."_

_"Enough to lose count?"_

_Uncomfortably, Scully said, "Maybe."_

_"But you don't remember any of the content of the dreams."_

_"No, and that's normal."_

_"It's normal but statistically improbable." Doctor Jennings passed the referral to Scully, who took the sheet with disdain. "If they were dreams, you'd know they were dreams, and even if they are dreams, these sound like they're coming from a place of trauma, and we can't let that go untreated. And maybe I'm completely wrong, but regardlessly, Doctor Thesbody will know how to treat these. She's your best bet."_

_Uncomfortably, Scully stared down at the scribbled name and phone number, her symptoms listed below as discussion points._

_"Her intake appointments are free of charge," Doctor Jennings gave. "That aside, how's your diet been?"_

_Scully turned the sheet over, left it on her lap._

_"Good," she said, her responses on autopilot for the remainder of the appointment._

* * *

_Dragging four reusable grocery bags over to the kitchen counter, she huffed, cans of chicken soup tearing at her muscles because, of course, the only reasonably healthy food he would eat was that stuff, straight out of the can itself. Though she knew such a thing was better than the frozen pizza or mint chocolate chunk ice cream habits he used to keep, she still wondered why he couldn't be bothered to heat up some kale-greens and sweet potatoes with roasted chicken that she'd left in meal-sized tupperwares in the fridge. After all, he was the one who used to harvest the kale from their garden, who baked her winter root vegetables on their coldest nights together; it wasn't for lack of taste, so she wanted to beg him as to why he let those home-cooked meals sit until she eventually ate them herself. She didn't even want to think about how dehydrated he must be._

_Turning toward the living room, she saw him half-asleep on the couch, his back to her, a blanket wrapped around his body, a throw pillow stuffed beneath his dirty hair. Before she'd left for the day - before her doctor's and dentist appointments, her trips to the bank and post office, and her grocery run - he'd been in that same position, offering a gruff farewell as she told him she was leaving. Based on the state of the area around him, he hadn't moved all day._

_Should she wake him? He didn't seem asleep, so she toed off her shoes by the door, walked to the couch, crouched alongside him. Softly, she tapped the couch in order to show her presence._

_"Hey," she whispered. "How're you feeling?"_

_He claimed it to be a cold, one that had seemed to last for the past few months and had worsened at predictable times. She called it something else._

_Mumbling, he gave, "I have a headache."_

_"I'm sorry," she said. "Would you like me to bring you an Advil?"_

_"No."_

_She shifted awkwardly, sat down on the floor so that her protesting knees could rest._

_"Water?" she asked. "Some tea, maybe?"_

_"I don't need any of that," he scoffed. "I'm just tired."_

_"Okay," she gave._

_Gingerly, she reached out to him, rubbed his back, felt him stir uncomfortably against her hand._

_"A headache won't get better if you just lounge all day," she insisted as she moved her hand in small circles against his skin. "How about a glass of water, okay? Just one."_

_"I said no, Scully."_

_"It's going to get worse," she said. "You don't have to sit around in pain all-"_

_"_ Stop! _"_

 _With one hand, he swatted away at her, made her recoil as her heart sped up. While she sat back anxiously, moved away from the couch, he settled into his spot again, his body looking as though the past few minutes had never happened. Forcing herself to breathe, she tried not to think about the other times, the raised voice - never a yell or shout but something above what he usually used with her - or the assertive tone or the wary motions he had around her, and she tried not to let tears spring to her eyes, and she tried not to look around at their decrepit home, papers of his flung everywhere, his dirty laundry littering the floor, plates left out on every surface near him. As she forced herself up, she tried not to realize that he hadn't even looked at her in at least a day, and she tried not to think of how long ago they last shared a bed, and she tried not to even_ think _when she came into the bedroom and shucked off her jeans, her thick sweater, her turtleneck, her wool socks. While she put on pajamas at four in the afternoon on a Saturday, she forced herself to think about her mother, or her brothers, or her job, or anything that wasn't currently around her, not his empty side of the bed or his barren bedside table or his sparse portion of their closet. After putting on thick pajamas, a soft flannel pair that warmed her up on even the coldest of nights, she crawled into bed and ducked beneath a comforter that had long ago stopped smelling like him, and somehow, she didn't even find the clothes comfortable, still felt a deep unease. All of it - the soup cans in unpacked bags, his back to her, the long and empty bed that kept them as far apart as he wanted them to be - felt like a cosmic joke, like some thread unraveling the known universe. There was an inevitability with Mulder; she couldn't imagine her life without him, didn't want a life away from him, but at the same time, she couldn't think of another person who could cause her so much pain._

No tears, _she policed as she pulled the duvet tighter around her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been in bed during daylight hours._ No tears, no sobbing, no thinking. Don't let it get to you. He's in pain, and you need to remember that. He's sick. He needs time and space, and you need to give him that. He'll come back. You know that he still loves you.

_But how could he heal if his sickness was one about which he was in denial? How could he heal if he treated - or, rather, didn't treat - a headache or cold instead of the real ailment? If he continued down this path, he would only hurt himself, and when a single tear trailed down her cheek, she forced herself out of bed, ran back downstairs, headed outside to her car, where her post-dentist baggie and referrals sat on the passenger's seat. She took the pile into the house with her, pulled out her cell phone as she brought everything into the bedroom._

_While she dialed the given phone number, she closed the door tightly, locked it for good measure._

_"Doctor Thesbody," she said after the therapist's customary greeting. "I'm looking to make an appointment for my partner."_


	11. No Other Witnesses, Just Us Two

Softly, she clicked open the door to the apartment, the key too heavy on her ring, her steps sloppy with gin and her skin radiating late-night winter chill, and as he stood in the doorway, the bathroom next to her, the bed just out of sight, the place felt still, the air thick, a silence she hadn't realized was possible in this city taking over. Light came in from the sliding glass doors, her suitcase still perched against the farthest wall, his somewhere closer to the bed. When they went to the Bahamas years ago, right after their brief stint with the Bureau, they'd shared a bag, her swimsuits intermixing with his. _To save money,_  he'd claimed as they'd checked one bag, but the soft smile on his lips told her otherwise.

Was Mulder still there? She couldn't hear him pacing, and he wasn't on the balcony. Maybe he'd gone out like she had, had sought an all-day diner and had moped over a cup of coffee while waiting for her to return. Checking her phone, she saw that it was past one in the morning - and that he hadn't called or texted at all while she'd been gone - so she walked into the main room, stilled as she saw his form in bed. Silently, he slept, the slow rise and fall of his chest telling her that he'd been out for a while now. On his bedside table, his phone sat charging, and his suitcase was a heap of formal clothes, his blazer balled up and left behind as he opted for pajamas. Stepping toward his suitcase, she stared down at the jacket, beautiful black wool that had aged perfectly, and felt her face grow heavy with sadness again.

She loved him. As she picked up the blazer and headed to the apartment's tiny closet, she knew that she loved him. She loved him while she hung the jacket up, and she loved him while she peeled her shoes from her worn-out feet, and she loved him while she pulled on pajamas, a navy J. Crew set she'd treated herself to for Christmas, and went to the bathroom so that she could brush her teeth. She loved him while she scrubbed failing makeup from her cheeks, while she pulled mascara from her lashes, while she rubbed lotion into her raw, city-scarred skin. She loved him when she walked back to the bed and stood at its footboard for many moments too long, wishing for a couch to appear. She loved him while she momentarily considered sleeping on the floor.

But she digressed and climbed in alongside him, was careful not to jostle the bed, but once she had settled, once she'd turned onto her side so that their backs were to each other, she stared out at the sliding glass doors, the balcony beckoning to her. Would another cigarette do any harm? She wanted to stop thinking, but in the end, she chose to favor sleep, her body exhausted despite her ongoing protests. Though she couldn't relax her muscles, and though the alcohol had made her feel sloshy and uncomfortable, she still tried to close her eyes, thought about melatonin and counting sheep and a frying pan to the head.

 _Mulder can never sleep after our fights,_  she knew, cringed at the revelation, _so he must not think that this is a fight. That, or he doesn't care anymore._

As a single tear leaked onto her pillow, she swatted away at it, didn't want to wake him up and was determined not to cry, not now, not after hours spent away from him, not after she'd decided she was fine. But could she really decide that? Was she able to choose contentment with this situation? _No,_  she told herself as another tear fell. _I can't. I'm not strong enough to do that._

After their fights, after they'd hashed everything out and reached an understanding, he always acted loving again, the anger between them having stifled his little touches and errant kisses; he would kiss her forehead or wrap his arms around her when she least expected him to, and sometimes, if they were in bed, he would spoon up to her and simply breathe her in, his nose pressed against her neck or between her shoulderblades, his breaths long and whole. If he were to wake up, he would do just that, piece her hair behind her ear and press a kiss to her nape, then regress to his side and wait for morning, a silent agreement of care between them. When their voices were thick and heavy with unsaid words, he couldn't sleep without speaking, so she never let them go to bed angry with each other, and she always asked, even when she knew his answer would hurt her. She'd seen so many sides of him - the beautiful, the terrifying, never the mundane, the uncomfortable and the sad and the indifferent - but this side, a quiet side, felt unrecognizable, too bland and exhausted to be Mulder, _her_  Mulder, the man who'd called her about cryptids at two in the morning just so he could hear her husky, sleepy voice. Though she'd once pegged him as the sanguine man to her melancholic woman, he'd grown choleric, his temper rising whenever she begged him to heal, his attitudes far from his own, his mind and body hurting though he seemed to want to keep them that way. Why wouldn't someone want to heal? When presented with helpful options - the pills, therapy, so many different propositions from her about going outside or eating healthier or regulating a sleep schedule - why hadn't he been enthusiastic? _It's just the depression,_ she told herself, but how could depression treatments be so flabbergasting in the face of depression itself? Why did she excuse his resistance through the depression when his resistance kept the depression around?

It didn't help that her experiences with what she imagined he was feeling had always been a result of her circumstances, never neuroscience. After he'd been abducted, she'd reached a low place, and though she'd talked to her doctor about how she'd coped with William's birth, she never, despite her emotional state, was diagnosed with postpartum depression. Intrinsically, she knew she couldn't relate to this experience of Mulder's, could never provide understanding or advice and could only stand by while he spent another whole night on his computer searching for answers to questions that hurt him to ask or while he sat silently through another therapy appointment - or said something, but regardlessly, he told her nothing of his therapy, so she would never know - or while he overlooked the organic meals she'd prepared for him and left in Tupperware in the fridge and opted for a whole bag or Doritos or even just an orange instead. Of course none of this made sense to her! She even prayed it never would.

But as she lay beside him, her tears soft and slow, she knew that, even if she understood the experience and felt akin to him in that way, she still couldn't save him. A certain phrase about horses being taken to water came to mind; if he didn't want her help, then she couldn't help him, not even if she dragged him to every therapy session, not even if she tried to bring him to bed at a reasonable time, not even if she cleaned his messes and made sure that the environment around him was as safe as possible. Until he wanted to heal, her efforts were for naught, and quickly, her tears fell faster, harder, her chest shaking with intermittent sobs while she cursed herself for the noise. Against his depression, she was powerless, a bystander who could only watch as he spiraled down, down, down into a man she no longer recognized, into a man she loved so deeply that the thought of leaving made her feel nauseous and disparaged. What would she be without him? _Happier,_  a nagging voice at the back of her mind said, and then, she stopped judging herself for her sobs.

And she couldn't save him, and no one could save the two of them either. After all, she was his only family, and her own family had grown sparse, just Charlie out wherever he was, Bill in Germany, and her mother nearby; none of them could argue that she needed to salvage this, and somehow, she figured that all of them would argue for her _not_  to save it, for her to travel alone and to go out and see the parts of the world they thought he'd made her miss. Everyone knew how Bill felt about Mulder, and more than once over the phone, Charlie had asked about her son and had seemed unsure of the vague answer she'd provided him, and her mother, though she loved Mulder, would always prioritize her daughter above him. Who was holding onto this relationship, just the two of them? What did Mulder's therapist think of her? What did _she_  think of herself?

The truth was that no one would be able to fix this other than the two of them, but Mulder had gone to sleep, and she'd wandered to a bar and had listened to an uncouth shrink tell her that everything she felt was her choice. Though they could fix this, neither of them appeared to want to. Was that what codependency was, a sense that being together painfully felt better than being happy apart ever could?

 _Maybe I should take some time off so that we can work on our partnership,_  she thought but immediately refuted, for then, she would sit at home while he brought out that wretched Xbox of his and shot aliens or soldiers or anyone else who came into his path, and she would glance up from her current novel and ask if they could talk while he insisted _we talked this morning_  or ignored her altogether. The things he needed most were all things she was incapable of giving him. There was no way for her to remedy his ailments. Though she had medical training, and though she'd read so many books and articles about treating depression, she wouldn't be able to help him, not unless he started wanting to heal.

Behind her, he shifted, so she tensed, stilled, tried to suppress her sobs while she heard his wakeful breathing. _Please don't notice me,_ she thought. _Please just go back to bed. Let me have this moment alone. I need to be alone right now. I'm scared, I'm tired, I'm lightheaded, and I need to be alone right now, Mulder. Please, Mulder. Please._

She heard him turn onto his other side, knew he was facing her, and though her sobs were blatant and unmistakable, she still tried to conceal them, to seem asleep, and then, her thoughts shifted.

 _Come closer,_  she dared him. _Come closer and kiss me. Kiss the back of my neck. Run your fingers through my hair and tell me that you're sorry in a whisper you're not sure I'll be able to hear. Wrap your big arms around me and hold me like you did when I told you William was yours. Make me feel so safe and warm that I forget all of this, all of it, and tomorrow, we'll go back to being the way we used to be. Do something that'll make me laugh. Kiss me. Put a hand on my hip and kiss my neck. Or just touch me. Touch me anywhere, absolutely anywhere. I want your hands on me. I want to remember what that feels like._

But he turned back over onto his other side, and for a long while, she waited, listened to his breaths until they returned to being long and slow, and then, she refused to hide her sobs anymore.

_Wake up, you idiot! Wake up and tend to me! Act like you still love me!_

Her breath caught.

_Do you even still love me?_

And her mind scrambled for salvation, for steady ground, and she thought of Greg's words, of how she needed to _choose_  her own happiness. How the hell could she be happy like this? Mulder hardly looked at her, and her job had taken over the rest of her life, medicine being her only salvation from their crumbling partnership. How could she fix this? Thinking of the good days, she lined her memories up like pieces of evidence, all separate exhibits that showed what their life had been together. Comfort, love, ease, passion, everything she could've ever wanted from their partnership was there, but as she surveyed the past year, she watched as those emotions steadily left, fear and loneliness taking their places. How could she have prevented such a thing? Could she work backwards through those memories until they were as they once were? Recalling Greg's words, she knew she couldn't make everything the same as it once was, but couldn't they reach a point in which they were kind to each other again? What could she do to make them better? What could she do to make _herself_  better?

She couldn't change Mulder's actions, but she could stop working so much, maybe find something to do in Washington. What about a yoga class? Though she initially scoffed at the thought, maybe a chance to find a group of zen-minded people would provide her respite. Maybe she could find an all-women's class that went out for scones afterward. Maybe she could find one of those New Age ones that took place while all of the participants were naked. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been naked solely for the purpose of being naked, no sex involved whatsoever. Before this evening, she could hardly even remember the last time she'd been bare for reasons other than changing clothes or showering. Why did she always insist on covering herself?

Her face hot, her cheeks sticky with tears, her hair clinging to her face, she felt a summer day's kind of discomfort, her body too warm, so she stood once more, climbed out of bed, headed to the bathroom in the dark. As she forced her pajamas off, she kept the light dimmed, then stepped into the shower. She turned the water, stayed still beneath the initially cold spray, stared down at the way droplets clung to her aging skin, then trickled down her breasts, her stomach, her legs. Turning over her wrists, she looked at the near-translucence of her pale skin, saw the thick blue veins beneath it; even in the dark, she knew she was fair, and the grayness of the minimal light made her feel small, like a ghost, like someone being shown how their life could've differed. _See, Dana? This is what happens when you realize that the way he loves you isn't enough for you both. To avoid this outcome, don't come into work on that one day. In fact, quit your Bureau job altogether. Meet a different man somewhere else. Have a regular menstrual cycle and two-point-five children. Feel as though there's something more out there, but never go looking for it. Ultimately, die feeling unfulfilled._

Once the spray turned hot, she leaned forward, let water fall over her crown and trickle through her long, curled hair. Though she liked the length, she thought of cutting it whenever she braided it or tied it back at work, her arms straining, her roots a shade grayer; however, she enjoyed putting it in messy buns in the morning, feeling it against her back, clipping it half-up in the spring. She liked how red it was, bright and individual. She liked running her fingers from her scalp to the ends of her tresses. Sometimes, she even liked washing it.

The apartment's owners had left them generic Costco-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner, so despite her affinity for the organic, all-natural, sulfate- and alcohol-free varieties, she poured shampoo into her hand, ran it through her wet hair, scrunched and rubbed in a way that mimicked but ultimately did not amount to what her hairdresser always did, and as she rinsed, she found that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the rest of her body in pale sight. Though she'd lost weight off of her thighs, she'd gained some on her stomach, likely dehydration bloat, nothing to be comfortable with. _I need to take better care of myself,_  she thought, and for once, the statement didn't make her scoff or pull up excuses; she needed more, to help herself before she helped others, to no longer end up in a hospital hallway's piss-puddle and to come home without a nagging fear of what was beyond her front door. She deserved better than to expend so much of her energy on unfulfilling matters.

Bringing conditioner through her hair - the scent was particularly strong, almost like warm caramel - she started at her ends and worked her way up in the darkness. Though she knew that doing so wouldn't be healthy for her skin, she washed her face again, scrubbed in circles around her eyes; she let soap soak away the rose lotion she'd put on her legs just for this evening, stood motionless under the spray while she let every sensation, from her bareness to the darkness to the warm water, come over her. It was a strange feeling to hurt so greatly but also be surrounded by such soft pleasures.

She toweled off in the dark, ran Mulder's sinkside comb through her hair, went to hurriedly put her pajamas on when she stilled, her gaze toward the bathroom's mirror, her heartbeat making the only noise in the room. Forcibly, she turned on the bathroom light, stared blankly ahead at the woman in the mirror, her hair slicked back, her eyebrows askew, a remnant of mascara staining beneath her right eye. She mapped the faded freckles on her face, the lines around her mouth, the crow's feet burrowing against her eyes. Though she rarely took the time to look at them, she found that she had beautiful eyes, their color a soft azure like the seas in the Bahamas, their brightness resilient despite her age. Tilting her head, she trailed the lines of her neck, watched her pulse move in time against her skin, pressed two fingers there, closed her eyes. For a moment, the city stilled, time kept in her heartbeats, her breaths so loud that they stifled her space in the cool bathroom, and then, she forced her eyes open once more, turned away from the mirror, sat down on the floor with her back against the sink.

She took her right hand and traced the lines from her neck to her shoulder, named each bone and major muscle along the way. Once she reached her wrist, she ran a fingernail over the parallel and intersecting lines beneath that delicate skin, saw how deep blue veins popped up. Momentarily, she pressed the nail into one, then lifted, the skin pinking as she moved her hand away. She'd been told that she had good hands, surgeon's hands, the kind that never shook or wavered; as she brought her left hand down the same path on her right arm, she steadily watched the way her body shifted, felt how dry her skin had grown. Once she reached her wrist, she clasped her hands together, tried to think back to the last time she'd truly admired her own form.

On her thirtieth birthday, she'd stood naked in front of a long mirror, her eyes keen on new marks, and of course, she'd grabbed excess thigh, had calculated exactly where she was in her menstrual cycle in hope of explaining the lump of bloat on her stomach, and by the time she'd finished, she'd decided not to buy new brassieres or anything else until she'd upped her gym routine. By thirty-five, she'd had enough with such frivolities and started wearing things that fit properly, her technicolor suits traded in for skirts and blazers, her hair styled in a bob, her heels more comfortable and her body, though more muscular, still just a body. However, she'd spent extra time in the mirror on certain mornings, had frowned at her marred hips and inner thighs, had wondered if she could ever objectively determine whether or not she was attractive. What did men see when they looked at her? What did women see? Was she frumpy and too professional, or did they wonder what was beneath the sleek lines of her skirt? And what did Mulder think?

Though she never knew Mulder's deeper and more analytical thoughts on her body, she knew the way he used to touch her, his strong hands traveling each beveled line from her thigh to hipbone or his fingers massaging the muscles on her back. Sometimes, he would use his hands, but other times, he would lie her down, and if she shifted, he would place a steady hand upon her, a silent _stay_  coming between them, and for what felt luxuriously like hours, he would run his mouth across her bare body, starting with her lips and moving down her legs, taking each of her fingers into his mouth while her toes clenched in pleasure. He did, however, express verbal interest in her breasts, made offhanded comments about them, and though they'd sagged, and though she could still discern her maternity stretch-marks upon them, his interest hadn't diminished for those reasons.

But when had she last looked critically at her body? She couldn't remember being alone and naked with herself within the past two or three years. Though she showered every day, and though she disrobed each night, she never spent much time naked, didn't understand why she'd found such haste in putting her clothes back on. Momentarily, she thought of how a long mirror would be optimal, then let that thought go; she didn't need a mirror to see herself tonight.

Folding her legs, she looked down, saw the way her stretched breasts lay there - it'd always mystified Mulder in the shower whenever she lifted to wash beneath them - and came to the top of her stomach, now taut but still showing evidence of childbirth. She wished she could've spoken to her thirty-year-old self and talked about the bodily misery that pregnancy could be, about how all the little discrepancies one once had turned into the most irrelevant complaints; she would give anything for a chance at that younger body again, for a chance to wear a tampon comfortably once more, for a chance to go without the knowledge that _diastasis recti_  was right around the corner. Bringing a hand to her left breast, she traced her fingers down her body, thought of each scar and turmoil and trauma she'd survived, childbirth and shootings and abductions be damned. She still had a chip in her neck, and as she brought her fingers against her hipbone, she found herself amazed that, despite every opportunity for her not to be, she had always remained strong, her body being solid proof of that.

At the inside of her thighs, she rubbed the pinkish stretch-marks there, remembered how she'd pawed them while Mulder nestled his head between her legs the first time, remembered how ashamed she'd been. What was there to be ashamed of? Those had adorned her legs since high school, standard growth leaving them behind, and nonetheless, they were just marks, just a part of her skin, just something on her body.

Though she trimmed her pubic hair whenever the length began to feel uncomfortable, her waxing days thankfully over, she'd let it go long recently because of her tight schedule and because grooming felt needless nowadays. She liked the way each hair was a reddish-brown shade, not the taupe color she'd noticed on girlfriends of the very distant past; though her color clearly didn't match that of her hair, her color felt distinct, almost iconic, and she liked that, if she were to label her vulva as one word, _iconic_  could fit. However, her labia had been a place of concern during her college years, back when she and her dormitory buddies would go to that one sex shop within walking distance from campus and giggle around videos of gravity-defying breasts and ornately-folded vulvas. Though her time spent watching porn at all had been fleeting - an imagination, she figured, required regular exercise - she'd never seen body hair on the women in pornography, had seen all pale vulvas so small and constrained that the look of her own made her feel like some kind of freak. Her labia minora fell far past her majora, and the ends of them weren't that ivory, bloodless color of a porn star's but instead a pinkish-brown, the contrast leaving her with youthful unease. After medical school, and after dating an artist whose statement was to craft portraits of everyday vulvas, she found her concerns to be for naught, but she still had to admit that, upon learning of Mulder's pornographic interests, she'd felt a twinge of discomfort.

She drew her knees up toward her chest, her legs spread, and used her pointer fingers to press her labia apart. Though the visual angle felt awkward, she liked being able to just look, no pressure to appear a certain way or serve a certain purpose. Softly, she trailed an analytical finger up her vulva, past her clitoris, into the soft hair on her mons. As she thought of the statement, she blushed, but objectively, she needed to admit it: she had a great vulva, a vagina that hadn't even torn during childbirth though she'd told herself countless times to expect it to, hair that grew softly in a color she secretly liked.

She extended her legs out. On her knees, she had a few freckles, four on the left and three on the right, and she liked how knobby the joints were, disliked how they'd tired of running and now wouldn't let her race without aching. Whenever she saw her feet, she thought of her sister's dancer-ankles, all taut with muscle unlike hers; Melissa had had the prettiest feet, so angelic and graceful, her second-toe longer than her first, and Scully had always admired the way they looked in sandals, found that her own never looked as nice. And her toenails demanded a pedicure, her heels tired and her nails in desperate need of a soft, warm polish. Pointing her toes and then flexing them, she took a deep breath, her mind open, her body wonderfully bare.

And, objectively, she was beautiful. Her body was mundane and elusive, brilliant and commonplace; the fact that she could have thoughts about it was, in and of itself, some kind of miracle. Softly, she brought her right hand to her left shoulder, massaged there while drops of water from her hair trickled down her back. _You really, genuinely need to take better care of herself,_  she thought, for though she had a resilient body and mind, there came a certain time when resilience was no longer admirable; even if she could survive like this, she deserved better than just pure survival. She deserved to see her body for its worth every day, to know that she was strong without having that strength tested, to be surrounded by unquestionable love, and now, she didn't want to settle for less than what she knew she needed.

Kneading her shoulder, she thought again of a yoga class, of something mindful and comforting, of something reaffirming. She could find one in Washington, couldn't she? There were bound to be hundreds of studios, and if she wanted an all-women's class - she figured one would provide respite - she knew she could seek one out. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she had a spare hour in the evening, so if she found a late class, she could attend one on those two days. What about the rest of the week? Friday nights were filled with ruckus in the city, and as she toyed with a knot in her muscles, she thought of clubs, of jazz music, of disco and joyriding and the way women swung on poles. Nowadays, she wasn't a Friday night kind of girl - one could argue that she'd never gone through that phase - but she wanted something, _anything,_  that could occupy her time. A play? A ballet? A movie?

_A museum._

Standing, she walked with fervor into the dark main room, pulled her cell phone from her purse, googled a list of museums near her home address. Of course, there were the Smithsonians, the Hirshhorn, more art galleries and exhibitions than she could even count. What if she started going out to those on Friday afternoons? Some of them were bound to be open late, weren't they? At some point, she and Mulder acquired a membership to the Smithsonian, so maybe she could even get in for free. Whatever she couldn't manage on Friday nights, she could see on Saturday or Sunday, given that those places were even open on Sunday.

_When was the last time you went to church?_

She switched to her phone's calendar - beyond the device's artificial light, Mulder slept soundlessly, and she shivered in the cold night air - and checked through the days. Going week by week, she recounted every Sunday, figured she hadn't been at all in February but was surprised to learn that her last service had been on the first Sunday of January. _That's almost as bad as only attending around Christmastime,_  she scolded, then decided to prioritize waking up early enough and attending mass each and every week. Maybe she could take her mother for brunch afterwards at that nice little cafe they both liked, a place with real maple syrup and the darkest, richest coffee, and maybe she could dawdle to a farmer's market closer to the city, and maybe she could come home by afternoon, throw some wash in, and relax with her book for the remainder of the day. Maybe she could learn to cook again. Maybe she could still remember how.

The cold taking over, she ducked back into the bathroom, pulled on her same pajamas, tied her hair up in a damp bun so that it wouldn't chill her neck. Though she could research this all night, could plan all of her days off and could figure out what to do about her newfound motivation, she knew that the first step to taking proper care of herself would be to get some damned sleep. If _exhaustion_  had been her diagnosis, then obviously, she needed to sleep. At her side of the bed, she hesitated, saw Mulder breathing softly, felt out of place but ultimately crawled in alongside him, her back turned toward him.

_What about the dreams?_

Taking her phone out again, she opened the notes app, decided to make all of this official and documented. Now, she had credibility to herself, so she wrote what she knew she needed most.

_Respite and comfort_

_Routine_

_Love_

She hesitated but ultimately wrote the last word.

_Therapy_

She turned her phone off, plugged it in for the evening, and forced herself to close her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from the song "Two" by the Antlers.


	12. Exhibit E

**EXHIBIT E - FEBRUARY 2012**

The last time she'd been this exhausted, she'd had four separate whiskey shots in her belly and had been fifteen minutes away from receiving her first acceptance letter to a medical school.

Padding over to the unmade bed, she thought with disdain of how her shower-wet hair would feel uncomfortable against her pillow, but now, she _needed_  sleep, wanted to curl up and stay in bed for days and days, wanted to wake up to a fresh spring morning and realize that this had all been some deep trance, a wine-trick, a myth like the ones Mulder used to concoct. However, today had taught her that dreaming - or working - away her reality would only lead to something akin to collapsing and pissing yourself. Right now, a surgery went on without her. The world went on without her. All she needed to do was sleep.

After she crawled beneath the sheets and pulled the comforter tightly around her body, she heard a soft knock like the one her mother used whenever she'd knocked on the door of the room her daughters shared. Missy never used to knock.

"Yeah?" Scully managed softly.

Mulder, still unshowered and frazzled from the morning-gone-awry, stood awkwardly in the jamb of the door, asked, "Is there anything I can get you?"

 _Sleep with me,_  she thought, but taking a deep breath, she shook her head against her pillow instead of saying that out loud.

"Ibuprofen? Benadryl?" he offered as though she hadn't just been in their bathroom, where those things were easily within reach.

"No, thank you," she gave.

He nodded, then approached her, kneeled at her bedside so that their eyes could meet. Softly, she turned her gaze down, a quiet headache brewing between her brows, the forced vulnerability making her wish that she could disappear. Reaching to her, he gingerly smoothed a lock of her hair behind her ear; she tried not to flinch at the touch.

"Hey," he said quietly, comfortingly, "look at me."

With unease, she looked up at him, at the loving smile he gave her, at the way he acted so suddenly comfortably around her, at how the scruffy beard and unkempt hair were the only signs of his that reminded her of last week's therapy appointment, before which he had practically chained himself to the passenger's seat of her car and insisted time and time again that these appointments were a waste of time. Though this facade made her want to give in to his touch, she knew all too well what was still beneath it; if she gave in, they would both get hurt.

"If there's anything you need," he said, his thumb cresting against her cheek, "just shout, okay? I'll be downstairs."

"Okay," she managed. Then, against her better judgement, she asked, "What'll you be doing downstairs?"

Softly, he smiled to himself, then looked into her eyes with a little spark of excitement. At the look, she felt her heart pound; the first signs of an oncoming fix were at hand, and she couldn't handle that right now, not after the incident at work.

"Mulder," she warned under her breath.

"I want to take you somewhere."

Meeting his gaze, she took a deep breath.

"I don't want to go anywhere," she insisted.

"It's a free vacation," he said. "Well, close enough. When was the last time we got away, Scully?"

"This isn't the time for that," she forced. "I just...I don't need the time off. I'll go into the hospital tomorrow and sort all of this out, and things will go back to normal."

"Scully-"

"I'm cutting back my hours," she gave, "and I'll take a weekend or two off. It's fine, Mulder, and I'm fine, and the last thing I need right now is a vacation."

"Scully, that's _absurd._  You collapsed from exhaustion at work. It's pretty obvious that you need some time off."

She huffed, " _Fine,_  but I don't need a vacation. Just let me be, Mulder. I'm exhausted."

The spark in his eyes fading, he nodded once to himself, then stood slowly. She closed her eyes, nestled her head against her pillow, waited on the inevitable clicks of the bedroom door as it opened once more and subsequently closed, Mulder returning to whatever hellish scheme he had concocted for this week. Cryptid sightings, new experimentation, government brutality, she played a mental game of Bingo and wondered which square would go along with this fix. If he went for _extraterrestrial sighting at two am, and he takes my car and leaves me with no way to get to work_ , then she'd have five-in-a-row and be able to shout that near-biblical word.

The door made no sound.

"I'm never going to be enough for you."

Opening her eyes, she looked over to where he stood, his hand on the doorknob, his back to her.

"Mulder..." she insisted.

"I'm really never going to be enough for you," he said, the statement both incredulous and predictable. He seemed to have fulfilled his own ill-fated prophecy, one from more years ago than she wanted to count. "I try to do better, and it's not enough. I try to _feel_  better, and you tell me I'm doing everything wrong or force me to do what clearly hasn't worked over and over again. You want to fix me though you don't know exactly what you want to fix about me. I'll never be enough for you, Scully."

Taking a deep breath, she tried to quell her thoughts, to push past the anger she felt, to keep herself from crying or screaming or defending herself or taking the clock on her bedside table and hurling it at him, square in the jaw. Right now, he'd look good with a broken jaw, and, _God_ , what the _fuck_  was she thinking?

She flinched at the sound when he turned the doorknob, and she could see her crossroads, an inevitable moment in which she could choose either to prioritize the two or them or to let him leave, this fight going unfinished, many fights beginning to brew. Either she could speak, or she could keep quiet, but what could she say? That he was right? That he was wrong? That their situation was so much more complicated than he thought? That their situation was so unimaginably simple that their actions within it were despicable?

He stepped through the doorway, but before he could close the door, she forced out last words.

"A vacation sounds nice," she almost spat, desperation soft in her voice.

Stilling, he didn't look back at her, didn't end this conversation in another way, let her breathe uncomfortably in a bed now hers, no longer theirs. Then, he took a step out of the bedroom and closed the door behind himself, the bedroom becoming deeply, acridly silent in his wake.


	13. Look and Despair

The crepuscular skyline held heavy clouds, the background as grey as the buildings in Manhattan, autumnal color sucked dry from the city. As she sat on the balcony, tapped her cigarette out over the ceramic bowl she'd been using as an ashtray, she wondered if this scenery were ever vibrant. _Sapokanikan,_  she reminded herself; back before the Dutch had taken over, this place had probably been beautiful, soft land against a flowing river, no car alarms or angry pedestrians or craft breweries that overused hops to occupy it. Life, she figured, was best when no one pried or took over, but though that sentiment seemed obvious, she found that few people abided by it nonetheless.

Her hair back in a bun, her body still pajama-clad, she pulled her knees up and rested her feet on the seat of her chair, then took another breath upon the cigarette. Though she knew it was a poor habit to regain, had seen in anatomy labs a visual and touchable comparison of a tarry and unmoving smoker's lung with a vibrantly pink healthy one, the indulgence made her feel cool and collected, her outbreaths feeling meditative, the nicotine bringing her a comfortably numb sensation. This morning, she wore only her pajamas, thick socks, and the same fleece from the day beforehand, now tinged with the scent of secondhand smoke; she'd woken before Mulder, sunrise beckoning to her while he slept on peacefully. Feeling a feather's touch of a hangover, she massaged the bridge of her nose, stared out at a mundane view she couldn't bring herself to find appealing.

 _Happiness is a choice, Dana,_  she heard Greg's voice in her head say, and though he was a drunk, a cracked and corrupt psychiatrist, his words had embedded themselves within her mind, and the more she looked out at the scene before her, the more she ran her thoughts through the past few months, she began to wonder how she'd actively chosen _against_ happiness. For one, there was working so much overtime even when she felt like shit, her heels aching, her body quite literally giving out; she hadn't done something benign but pleasurable like clothes-shopping or getting a manicure in at least a year; the last time she'd had a night out predated the start of this calendar. Why had she chosen against such things? Why hadn't she taken time after a shift to take a walk through one of the parks in the city? Why were all of her library books unread and overdue? When was the last time she'd eaten pasta, real pasta, something covered in a thick, creamy sauce? How long had it been since she'd had an orgasm?

If happiness was a choice, then she couldn't bear to choose against it anymore. Right now, neither she nor Mulder felt happy, and despite her nagging and help, nothing had changed. Though she longed for such a thing not to be true, she couldn't help those who refused her efforts outright, and she had no obligation to aid people who wanted no aid. If, before his next appointment, Mulder said that he wouldn't like to go to therapy, then after insisting once or twice and inevitably receiving the same answer, she wouldn't force him. After all, they were both adults, and she was not his savior, his parent, his livelihood; if he wanted to live like this, then he would live like this, and she wouldn't try to convince him of something else. She'd already spent enough energy trying to help him understand his predicament, so giving more energy would be fruitless. Now, she needed to prioritize herself.

And today, she would put herself first, would bid him adieu after having lunch at a place of his choosing, then spend the rest of her day exploring. Already, she'd bought a ticket, only one, to a ballet at Lincoln Center this evening, and she wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum; sometime along the way, she would head to an organic pizza restaurant that served some specialty pie topped with a bed of spinach, garlic, homemade mozzarella, and gardened basil and oregano for dinner. Somewhere, she would find a record store and pay whatever ridiculous price they had for _Bella Donna_  on vinyl, and if she found a nice boutique, she hoped to buy a dress, one that made her look sleek and modern, something to wear to next month's ovarian cancer benefit gala that she originally hadn't planned on attending. Just to say that she had, she wanted to buzz into Tiffany's. Though her bedside stack of books had been utterly neglected, she still wanted to go to the Strand anyway, pick out something outlandish and new, something unexpected.

And Mulder would meet some contact of his, and genuinely, she hoped he would have a nice time. She hoped Mulder would find exactly what he wanted to find, and she hoped that psychokinesis was worthwhile, and she hoped that he someday realized and understood what she'd been telling him for months, that hobbies were healthy but addictions were not. Taking another hit from her cigarette, she sent a genuine feeling of compassion toward him, wanted him to find peace, wanted there to be a day when he could live without such a compulsion and could instead pursue these interests without having them consume his life but knew that she was powerless to influence him. She'd done all she could do; now, it was her turn to do more for herself.

Though the view was dreary, she chose to lift her cell phone from her pocket, to pull up a music app and start playing some Martha Wainwright through the tiny speakers. Standing up, she chose to head over to the wall of the balcony with her ashtray-bowl in hand, to lean her forearms upon the ledge and look down and out at the city, its grey tones tired and apathetic; she chose to seek out the contrasts, such as a woman many feet below her wearing a bright orange jacket or a golden retriever on a walk. Though she hated this city, she liked dogs, and she liked bookstores, and she liked art, so she would focus on those elements and not on the aggressive taxi-drivers and shouting people. If happiness was a choice, then she would choose it; any other option was out of the question.

She snubbed the cigarette out at the bottom of the bowl, then took a deep breath of acrid city air in, her intention for the day cemented. Regardless of her circumstances, she would be happy today.

The sliding glass door opened, and as she turned to face Mulder, she saw his face painted halfway in remorse, halfway in discomfort.

"We need to talk."

His words sounded rehearsed, so she turned back toward the skyline.

"I'm not going to yell at you," she dismissed, shrugging. "You made a choice, and that's that. What's done is done."

"What are you talking about?"

Looking back at him, she chewed her lip, said, "I don't have the energy to be angry with you."

Flummoxed, he leaned into the jamb of the door, his posture uncomfortable.

"So this is okay?" he asked. "You're not angry?"

"That's not what I said."

"Then _what,_  Scully?" he forced.

She took a deep breath.

"We'll have lunch together, as you said we would," she began, "and then we'll go separate ways for the day. I have a few things planned, as do you. It'll be nice to see the city."

"That wasn't what you said last night."

"I'm allowed to change my mind."

At his silence, she turned back to the skyline. Now that she really looked at it, she could see the little outlines of people all over, wondered what each of their stories were. If everyone in this city was technically not from here, where had they begun their lives? And whose lives had been inscribed within these lands back when it had been Sapokanikan? What untold histories lay beneath these concrete sidewalks?

"You're..." he began. "You're dismissing something. When you left, I thought you were angry."

"I _was_  angry," she said. "Now, I'm not."

"Why not?"

"Because I chose not to be."

"You can't just _choose_  how you feel," he said. "Emotions aren't choices; they're emotions."

She lifted her lip in a smirk.

"Maybe," she said.

"You're not acting like yourself."

 _I could say that about how you've been for many of the past months,_  she thought but digressed; that wasn't productive thinking and would never be.

"I'm trying something new," she said.

"Something new? Like _that?_ "

Looking to him, she watched as he pointed to the cigarettes on the outdoor table, a pack from which she'd only smoked three.

"God, Scully, you know better," he said, exasperated.

"I'm not happy."

The change in subject jarred him; she faced away from him once more.

"I haven't been happy for a while now," she said, the words coming from her lips in the way a breeze would pass: softly, with comfortable ease. "There's things I need to change, parts of myself that I need to revisit. I'd like to take today to do just that."

"You're working too much. No one can possibly be happy when they're working as much as you are."

"And what do I do out of work?"

Though she knew she was gaining heat, she decided not to force herself to calm, went with this emotion. Facing him, she asked, "What do I do when I'm home for a weekend? I read, sometimes. Watch TV. I cook for you, clean for you, do the laundry and the dishes and everything else. It's all mindless activity, Mulder, and none of it brings me happiness. Between work and home, I feel stuck. I'm not going to let that happen anymore."

Awkwardly, he stood there, and she watched as he processed the information, blamed himself, cowered at the thought, but truly, she didn't blame him. Though his actions hadn't helped her happiness, she knew she was wholly responsible for how she felt. Her energy was her responsibility and hers only, and no matter what he did, he wouldn't be able to change that.

After a long pause, he gave, "I'm sorry."

She huffed, asked, "For what?"

"For...not telling you," he said. "For making this out to be something it wasn't. I'm a coward."

"You're not," she said. Though he was an addict, he certainly wasn't a coward. Somehow, she found that addicts must be the least cowardly of all people.

Another long pause came. Softly, the wind rustled her bun, and down below, a few women laughed in the street, all of them excitedly babbling about something Scully couldn't discern.

"Is that it?" he asked. "Is that all we're going to say to each other?"

"What more is there to say?"

"God, I don't know," he said uncomfortably. "I thought you'd have more to say. That's all."

"There's plenty I could say, but I know none of it will change anything."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Facing him, she said, "I think that what you're doing today is unhealthy, and I think that it's hurting you more than you realize. However, it's your choice, not mine, and you are free to do whatever you choose. I cannot change your choices."

"It's my _life,_  Scully," he said, shaking his head uncomfortably, shocked that he still had to explain such a thing. "This isn't something I can just lock up in a drawer and pretend never existed like you did."

She sucked her lips in and nodded, her point proven.

"I...I'm going to go take a shower," he said, his movements awkward, his visage mildly aghast.

"Okay," she said, then turned back to the skyline.

She heard but didn't see the sliding glass door close, and after a few moments, she returned with her bowl to the table and chair, set the bowl down next to the cigarettes and sat back, the cold air making her shiver, her nearly-sleepless night throwing her body off. _Maybe I'll skip the Met,_  she thought, _and stay in for a nap while he's gone._  Quickly, she dismissed the thought, didn't want to waste today by staying inside all alone, but at the same time, she longed for some quiet moments in bed, no man downstairs to ask her when her next shift was, no colleagues waking her while she slept in an on-call room. Though she longed for a chance to stay in bed, she needed to see art, to venture out, to feel and feel and feel some more until, somehow, this dreadful city at least somewhat redeemed itself. Back in college, she'd known that the only way to master organic chemistry exams was to do every single textbook problem over and over again until the parts she hated most of the subject became easy and quotidian, so she figured applying that model would bring some meaning to this hopeless vacation. She couldn't just stay home and hope for things to get better; she needed action, fervor, a chance for adventure.

However - and she bit her lip at the thought - she longed for a chance to stay in bed, slip her clothes off, feel the soft sensation of sheets against bare skin while she brought her hand between her legs. She truly couldn't remember the last time she'd had an orgasm, and as she toyed with the thought, she craved a few, a fast one to satisfy her need followed by a long, slow, easy one to indulge her senses. Then, she longed to lounge back and stay in bed until she no longer felt like a nude in a Renaissance painting, until the light of day beckoned her once more.

The balconies had concrete barriers between each of them, so she couldn't see her neighbors on any side, and beyond this building was only the river, the closest windows opposite of her being those in Manhattan, so she let her legs fall open, reached beneath her fleece to paw at her own breast. Of course, her first instinct told her to check for lumps, so she rolled her eyes at herself, thumbed her nipple in featherweight circles. Bringing her free hand beneath the waistband of her underwear, she placed her pointer and middle fingers on either side of her clitoris, moved them in soft, slow circles.

 _If nothing gets better,_  she reminded herself, her fingers swirling against her sex, _you need to leave him._

Then, she chose not to think anymore.


	14. Exhibit F

**EXHIBIT F - FEBRUARY 2000**

A Georgetown morning. She was surprised that songwriters had never taken to one and written a sixties-style bop about how light came in through her bedroom window, little bits of dust hanging in the air, and about how she felt just warm enough while, outside, snow sat on the ground. Beside her in bed, Mulder lay, a file - it wasn't uncommon for him to take one to bed given his insomnia, and it wasn't uncommon for her to insist that valerian tea or even a prescription would be healthier - in his hands, his bare chest uncovered but his hips still beneath the blankets. Somehow, he was always too warm.

His little duffel sat on a chair next to her bookshelves, his dry-cleaned - at her insistence - suit hanging in her closet alongside her own clothes. At the beginning of the month, she'd cleaned out a drawer for him in her dresser, but she hadn't managed the courage to tell him that yet. They'd exchanged house keys so long ago that it felt awkward to offer a space to him that was already theirs to share. She'd worn a tank top to bed, a new-relationship lacy kind, but her bottoms were a pale blue thick flannel, feminine and casual and unlike her _nighttime suits_  - his words - in their softness. Yesterday, she turned thirty-six years old, and he brought her red roses before work, then gave her a pair of Tiffany solitaire gold-set diamond earrings after he'd cooked her dinner.

"I didn't know you could cook," she'd said as she took a bite of perfectly-cooked roast chicken with shallots and the most garlicky escarole she'd ever had.

He'd grimaced, his tie loose and five o'clock shadow dimpling his chin, the candles on her kitchen table casting him in a luxurious light.

"You don't want to know," he'd said, "how many times I've roasted chickens in my oven this past month."

In bed, she moved closer to him, turned onto her side so that she could rest her chin on his shoulder, her forehead on his cheek. Softly, she trailed her knee over his covered legs beneath the sheets. She liked the way he fit in her bed.

"Good morning," he said, his voice gravelly as he tilted his head and kissed her messy scalp. Momentarily, he eyed the earrings, liked how she'd insisted on wearing them all night.

" _Mulder,_ " she'd lamented when he'd given them to her, "these...they're far too expensive."

And they were expensive, or they _had_  been expensive when he bought them three years ago, after her cancer had gone into remission and after he'd sworn he would tell her how he felt and therefore needed a Christmas or Easter or birthday or other present worthy of what he felt. These earrings had been hers long before she'd opened their box.

Many kisses, a cleared kitchen table, and three orgasms later, she'd finally thanked him for the gift.

"What time is it?" she asked softly.

"Just shy of seven," he said, tracing her bare arm with his fingers. "I turned off your alarm when I woke."

She hummed a response, nestled herself closer to him.

"What file is that?" she asked.

Sticking it on the bedside table next to him, he said, "Frat prank, I think. Waste of paper."

Smirking, she said, "You're lying."

This time, he hummed the response, then pressed his nails against her forearm.

"You're awake," he mumbled. "Files don't matter when you're awake."

"Oh, really?" she chuffed. "I'll have to remember that."

"They don't matter when you're awake like this," he corrected, then turned on his side and faced her, their foreheads close together. He liked the way they fit well together in bed, her toes so much farther from the footboard than his were.

Softly, he went to kiss her, and though their lips met, she groaned against him, whispered _morning breath_  as he kissed her anyway. Soon enough, she would understand how far past formalities he felt they were, and she hoped that he would sooner realize what formalities she _did_  want, like an actual date beyond the confines of their homes or a case. For now, he kissed her good morning, leaned his forehead warmly against hers. The weather report said that they might have a snowstorm coming in, and he hoped that the city would be so covered that they wouldn't be able to get to work and would have to stay here, the two of them curling up together, Scully wearing one of his shirts. He liked when she wore his shirts. He liked that she was a Pisces. He liked that she bashfully loved diamonds and insisted on just one Georgetown Cupcake each instead of a birthday cake and probably didn't have any good breakfast food - corned beef hash in a can, for example - in her pantry. He liked that, when they inevitably went into the kitchen for said breakfast, he would see a dozen red roses sitting in a crystal vase. He wondered how many more times he'd get to see the flowers here. He wondered if they smelled as good as her lightly-perfumed wrists did.

She broke off the kiss.

"I need to shower."

Though she tried to move from bed, he tugged her back, and of course, she groaned but eased back into his arms. After so many years of trying to convince her that he had good ideas, he liked this Scully, one willing to come back to bed without more than a single touch in askance, scientific evidence be damned. He liked the freckles on her arms too, all spots that he rarely got to see.

And her bare face in the Georgetown sunlight? He wondered why no one had written songs about it, about how bright her eyes were, about her laughter lines and frizzed hair and askew brows and beauty, just beauty, warmth and beauty. Tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear, he kissed the tip of her nose, then asked, "What's it like being thirty-six?"

Based on her groan, that was the wrong question to ask.

"You should know," she grumbled against her pillow. "You've been here already."

"Composite number," he said. "How long's it been since you were one of those?"

She gave him a look.

"No time at all," she deadpanned. "Thirty-five is also divisible by five and seven."

"Oh," he gave.

"Thirty-four is composite too."

"Scully-"

"So is thirty-three."

"We get it. I'm bad at-"

"And thirty-two, but not thirty-one. So it's been a number of years since I was a prime, not a composite."

"I love you."

She stilled, her eyes downcast, the joking mood suddenly gone. Once Dana Scully, always Dana Scully. He wondered what would happen if he brought up china patterns but couldn't giggle at the thought, not with how her brow furrowed and lip pouted in the way they did whenever she felt nervous and confused.

"I...do," he gave, unsure of what else to say.

Softly, she nodded to herself, said, "I know."

His heart beat stiffly, his body feeling awkward and swollen, the room's walls seeming to edge closer and closer to them. Such a talk, he figured now, would be better on a weekend than on the current weekday, but of course, his hindsight outranked his foresight by far.

"Hey," he tried, and softly, she came back to the moment, looked up at him for a beat and then looked back down. "I didn't mean to make you upset."

"You didn't," she insisted quickly.

"Then what's going on?"

"I'm...thinking."

"About what?"

"About what that means."

"What else?"

"About...everything else."

"Scully-"

Looking up, she met his gaze, said with alarming intensity, "Either this will end, or it won't."

For a long silence, he stared at her, didn't know what to make of the statement, didn't know how to process such a reaction. He'd never looked at this in such a way before, in binaries; there'd always been a sense that someday he would tell her how he felt and manage something more between them both, but he'd never thought beyond that, of hypotheticals like marriage and breakups and deaths and other endings or beginnings that made him wince. But, of course, Dana Scully saw the endings before she saw the beginnings, and before he'd even said those words to her, she'd known what to make of them. As she'd said, either they would end, or they wouldn't.

However, he didn't like that idea, the sense that something good would be a lack of an ending, for she was worth more than a failed attempt at a relationship. He loved her, had loved her for a long time now, but if they didn't work together, then there was no use in staying together. Though the prospect of an end made him wince, what made him more uncomfortable was the thought of her in years from now, unhappy but unwilling to say so.

Despite how Scully's binaries held an air of truth, he couldn't look at this in the same way, not right now, not while work loomed on and his words hung so heavily in the air between them.

"This could end," he gave slowly, "or it couldn't, but I'm always going to love you."

She swallowed, and as he reached out to stroke her arm once more, she reluctantly laughed, her eyes dewing, said, "I'm scared."

He quirked a brow, asked, "Of what?"

Shaking her head, she said, "I don't know. Of everything. Of this."

"We've survived far worse than this."

Laughing, she looked to him, said, "You can't possibly be sure of that."

He needed to concede that she had a point, but now, they were back to laughing, her little earrings glinting in the sunlight, her eyes bright and warm, everything about her so intoxicating that he wondered if calling them both in sick the day after her birthday would raise any red flags.

"For the record," she gave, a shy smile on her pretty face, "if this ends, or if it doesn't, I'll still love you too."

And his heart clenched, and he took a deep breath, and he wanted to remember every aspect of this moment, from her short red tresses to his suit in her closet to the drooping houseplant on her dresser to the books, all of her books, enough books to merit their own room in a big, spacious house. That could be their future, a house way out somewhere, one close to her mother's but far enough from any cities that she could sleep sweetly each night. They could find handmade wooden furniture for the main rooms, keep his couch if only for nostalgic reasons, outfit a kitchen full of those cast iron pans that Scully so liked even though he didn't understand their appeal. Of course, there would be a room for her books - an office, maybe - and every wall would be lined with the most diverse library he'd ever seen, and he would come in there to find her hunched over a novel while curled in a big plush chair, her mind far from this world. He loved watching her lose herself in a book, how she was like a sleeping dog, completely immersed and unaware of her real surroundings.

Or maybe their future was a series of apartments, new places every few years as they continued to run from the tragedies that stained their old carpets with blood or even something worse than blood. Maybe they would live in motels and have only themselves and their packed toothbrushes to rely on. Maybe they would rent one of those camper-vans, and Scully would hate it, and they'd sleep beneath the stars every night. Maybe they'd move to northern Maine and have those cards that meant they could cross the Canadian border without batting an eyelash. Maybe they'd live by the sea. He'd always loved that she was a Pisces, and Pisces women belonged by the sea.

And, of course, he had to concede the possibility that this would all end, that it would go terribly and that horrible words would come between them and that they'd hurt each other in ways they currently couldn't fathom. In the end, she might end up married to some businessman, adopting two-point-five kids, sending him bulk-printed Christmas cards with a little note just for him on the back. Maybe they would see each other down the line and not be able to talk. Maybe he would find someone else, someone who understood him more; the thought sounded impossible, but he forced himself to consider it anyway, to think of how things could change so easily and how life didn't slow down or stop or change at one's will. Maybe they would ruin each other. Maybe they wouldn't even recognize each other by the end.

But, most likely, they'd have mornings like this, soft ones in her bed, roses on the kitchen table. Most likely, they'd go into work, and they'd uncover whatever they could, and she would doubt him, and he would doubt himself, but in the end, they would always come together. Most likely, they'd be together for a while, and most likely, they would take further and further steps in that partnership, whichever ones books and movies told them were the logical things to do. Most likely, they'd make a commitment. Most likely, they would be happy together.

And why would it matter if it ended horribly? He'd rather have good memories with her featuring a horrible ending than no memories at all.

"I do love you," she said, breaking his odd silence. If she could understand his thoughts, she didn't let onto it, so he ran his thumb over her bare skin, decided to stay in this moment as much as he could.

"We need to shower," he said.

"Yeah, we do," she gave.

"I don't want to get up."

"Me neither."

For a moment, they simply stared at each other, hands reaching for whatever they could touch, the air between them warm on the cold February day. A Wednesday. Midway through the week. He loved spending whole weekends with her though he couldn't understand how so much time spent together had yet to tire them of each other.

Then, she reached behind herself, picked up the corded phone at her bedside, dialed while he looked on at her twisted spine; he counted each of her visible vertebrae.

"Hello, Assistant Director?" she said. "Yeah, uh, this is Agent Scully. Mulder and I are...we're down with a stomach virus. Pretty contagious. The sheriff we worked with last week called and said there's an outbreak in that town. We've both got to take a sick day."

She paused awkwardly.

"Oh, right. He's...he can't come to the phone. So I'm calling on his behalf."

Mulder grimaced, but when she blushed, all flustered from playing hooky for likely the first time in her life, he couldn't help but smile.

"Yes. Thank you, sir. Yes. Hopefully, we'll be in good health soon. Thank you. Thanks. Goodbye."

Then, she hung up the phone, turned back toward him, and kissed him again.


End file.
